Syaheedah Iskandar works with vernacular ways of seeing, thinking, and being. Drawing on Southeast Asia’s visual culture(s), her research traces entanglements between the unseen and the hypervisual, and how these translations materialise across material and new media practices. She has developed projects independently and with institutions. She is currently with the Singapore Art Museum.
Since joining the museum, she has worked on several projects, including the SAM Fellowship with Shooshie Sulaiman, Building a ‘non-institution’ institution (2024-2025), SAM Contemporaries (2025 & 2023 editions), Nguyen Trinh Thi’s 47 Days, Sound-less (2024), Ming Wong’s Wayang Spaceship (2022-2024) and the first Material Intelligence edition, Korakrit Arunanondchai’s A Machine Boosting Energy into the Universe (2022). Syaheedah was the inaugural Emerging Writers’ Fellow for Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia (2019) and received the IMPART Award 2020 (Singapore) for her curatorial work. She holds an M.A. in History of Art and Archaeology from SOAS, University of London.
