Upon arrival at Singapore's Warehouse Hotel, visitors come across unfamiliar signage above a reception desk and pause for a moment.
"They ask if the hotel has changed its name," a staff laughed.
In the centre of the main lobby, a black-and-white video of a man cleaning the sea is being screened in front of nine chairs. In the lounge, video works of maritime existence play. Installations, performances and archival materials unfold across the hotel like the ebbs and flows of the tide.
"Wan Hai Hotel: Singapore Strait" marks the second edition of "Wan Hai Hotel", which debuted at Shanghai's Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in 2024. Grounded in Epeli Hau'ofa's oceanic vision, the project proposes that the sea should connect rather than divide. By activating the century-old heritage property along the Singapore River, it reflects the island's maritime position at the crossroads of the world.
"'Wan Hai Hotel' is a kind of framework to think how we can infiltrate and be infiltrated by this territorial water that surrounds us," said Alfonse Chiu, editor at RAM.
A body of works in this project trace movement across the vast ocean. For instance, Guatemala-based artist Esvin Alarcón Lam's video work Sail connects to his family's transpacific migration.
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