PHOTO: NOX, 2023. © Lawrence Lek. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation, Berlin.
A key event of Singapore Art Week 2026 , NOX will make its Southeast Asian debut at ArtScience Museum.
2026 is set to begin with an extraordinary exploration of imagination and innovation as ArtScience Museum unveils NOX, a visionary site-specific solo exhibition by Lawrence Lek, one of the world’s leading contemporary artists working at the intersection of science and technology. Blending the diverse strands of his multidisciplinary practice – architecture, gaming, filmmaking, speculative fiction and music, the London-based artist builds an immersive environment exploring the psychological consequences of a future populated by smart systems and intelligent machines.
From 23 January 2026 to 19 April 2026, NOX- short for Nonhumman Excellence delves into the consciousness of machines and explores the architecture of a future smart city. Featuring interactive game stations, immersive soundscapes, videos and specially designed scenography, NOX plunges visitors into a futuristic metropolis where the fictional Farsight Corporation, an Anglo-Chinese technology conglomerate, tests and rehabilitates its fleet of disobedient autonomous vehicles. Within this speculative world, visitors encounter Enigma 76, a self-driving var learning to balance autonomy and emotion as well as the caregiving robot Guanyin (named after the Goddess of Mercy) that oversees the rehabilitation process of these non-compliant machines.
NOX invites visitors to witness the potential consequences of integration of advanced AI entities in future urban life, illuminating both the promise and peril of intelligent machines as the world accelerates through an era defined by automation and AI. The exhibition prompts reflection on agency, ethics and empathy between humans and the thinking machines they create, urging a re-examination of what it means for a future populated by sentient technologies.
This expansive and immersive exhibition marks the Southeast Asian debut of NOX, originally commissioned by Berlin-based LAS Art Foundation and presented in collaboration with Farsight Corporation. Farsight was first conceived as an AI-driven tech monopoly in Lek’s science fiction film Geomancer, set in the year 2065 and produced in 2017. The following year, Lek launched Farsight as a real-life production company to produce his artworks, using the creative strategy of hyperstition – where a speculative idea becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The new adaptation at ArtScience Museum marks Lek’s first solo exhibition in the region and the Museum’s commitment to presenting future-shaping projects at the intersection of art, science and technology.
A companion piece to NOX, the exhibition also features the Southeast Asian premiere of Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot, co-commissioned and co-produced by Frieze and Forma for the 2024 Frieze London Artist Award. The video game re-imagines the Buddhist Bodhisattva of Compassion as a robot therapist who must repair self-driving cars, inviting players to uncover Guanyin’s story through narrative world-building.
Winner of the 2024 Frieze London Artist award and named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people working in AI, Lek is also known for advancing the concept of Sinofuturism, a non-Western approach to futurism rooted in East Asian contexts. Through immersive installations that blend science fiction with spiritual and existential inquiry, Lek’s work challenges dominant narratives of technological progress.
NOX and Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot expands his Sinofuturist cinematic universe, a richly interconnected body of films, games, soundtracks and environments that interrogate the emotional capacity of AI and the emergence of postman identity.
NOX is part of a constellation of artistic experiences at ArtScience Museum in 2026 that includes a photography exhibition in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History, Oxford University Museum of Natural History and award-winning British artist Levon Biss.
Running in parallel and across Marina Bay Sands during January 2026 is the fourth edition of Where Art Takes Shape, a festival of creativity and artistic expression that brings together the world of art, food and culture and includes Southeast Asia’s leading contemporary art fair ART SG.
From mid-December, tickets to NOX will be available for purchase at all Marina Bay Sands box offices and online. For more information on the exhibition, please visit https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/exhibitions/nox.html.
