Each museum exhibition tells multiple stories, and curators often have to decide what works to include to best present these stories to their audiences. In the case of In Search of Southeast Asia through the M+ Collections, the curators hope to present stories that represent the breadth and diversity of the museum’s collection related to the region of Southeast Asia. However, they couldn’t include particular works for practical reasons, such as lack of space in the M+ Pavilion, needing to represent each maker’s practice with only one or two pieces, and even limited ceiling height. Below, exhibition curators Pauline J. Yao and Shirley Surya spotlight some of the works they would have included if they could.

Heri Dono’s works incorporate the important socio-political context of contemporary Indonesia and Dono’s training in Indonesian folk art and puppetry, fusing traditional materials and subject with a modern or contemporary approach.

Fermentation of the Mind, pictured at the top of this article, consists of nine wooden primary school desks with eighteen heads nodding mechanically in unison. Viewers can step up on a pedal to trigger an electrical switch that turns on a recording of a Javanese form of voice chanting about politics and philosophy, purposely rendered as unintelligible distorted voices and sounds. The work can be viewed as a criticism towards the Suharto period, which was believed to encourage a dullness of mind through endless brainwashing, and the nodding heads symbolising the ‘yes men’ mentality of the regime.

Flying Angels, meanwhile, consists of ten fiberglass figures hung from the ceiling. On the chests of the figures, a window reveals the inner electronic and mechanical workings that power the wing movements. The make-up and headdresses of these figures follow the style of Javanese puppet theatre. The graceful wing movements are choreographed by Dono in collaboration with a team of radio repairmen, who salvage electronic parts from the mountains of consumer waste discarded by the wealthy. The parts are reassembled into new electronic goods that can be used by the economically disadvantaged segment of the population.

Why we couldn’t include the works: The reason is simple! Heri Dono’s works are both quite large, and Flying Angels requires sufficient hanging space, so choosing one of them would unfortunately have meant removing other artworks or artists.

Heman Chong has a varied artistic practice—of objects, images, installations, situations, and texts—that speak to conceptual art tendencies in the region. His works in the M+ Collections are striking and epic in scope.

Monument to the People I Have Forgotten (I Hate You) centres on a singular everyday object—a name card—multiplied a million times. Sized 8.5 x 5.5 cm and printed black on both sides, the name cards swarm and blanket the floor as an understated, underfoot monument. Spread over the ground in layered piles to form an unbearable tactility and slippery instability, the name cards convey notions of failed promises and the false intimacy of fleeting personal relations. Acting as a monument to the nameless, forgotten, and unimportant, Monument to the People I Have Forgotten (I Hate You) is a suggestion of how thin the line is between the emotions of love and hate.

Why we couldn’t include the works: As you might be able to tell from the description of the work, Monument to the People I Have Forgotten (I Hate You) demands a sizeable footprint and is too large for the space. It also came with some logistical and also budget implications to realise.

The Singapore Conference Hall and Trade Union House (1961–1965) by Malayan Architects Co-partnership, also known as MAC, is considered highly influential in Singapore’s architectural and socio-political history and greater Malaya. It was the first building in Singapore from the post-colonial era to be gazetted as a national monument in 2010.

As the winning design for the home of Singapore’s Trade Union Congress—the city’s largest conference hall—it was a breakthrough for the young firm founded by Lim Chong Keat, Chen Voon Fee, and William S.W. Lim. It quickly became a prominent modernist landmark in Singapore’s rapidly developing commercial district. The hall’s lofty and layered concourse encourages public movement, while its transparent glass facade visually connects the building with the main road.

This accessibility and simplicity of form set the project apart from the enclosed and imposing conventions of colonial architecture. Its striking openness embodied the ideals of responsible trade unionism and the brief alliance between Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party and the Labour Movement in the ambition to create a democratic and socialist society. The building was hailed as a symbol of national pride and international aspirations.

The model we have in the collection is also unique as it was made under the close supervision of Lim Chong Keat, the lead designer of the building itself, to remain faithful to the form and materiality of the 1965 competition model, as well as the final design of the building.

Why we couldn’t include the work: Due to space limitations and the need to represent the diversity of works representing architecture in the region of Southeast Asia, we could only show a few pieces to represent each practice.

For example, we chose to show a model of another building—the Negeri Sembilan State Mosque—designed by MAC (later succeeded by Architects Team 3) instead of the Singapore Conference Hall and Trade Union House. In addition, we wanted to present a significant project from Malaysia, as opposed to Singapore, since works from Singapore were already well represented in the show. The exhibition was, however, able to represent the Singapore Conference Hall project in the form of press photographs and a souvenir brochure for the building’s opening.

The Nation Building—the headquarters of Bangkok’s leading newspaper—by Sumet Jumsai Associates is one of architect Sumet Jumsai’s most recognisable and important designs. Its exterior was inspired by the profile of the newspaper’s chief editor working on a word processor while sitting on a stool, with electronic circuitries depicted on the surface. It is a culmination of Jumsai’s exploration of the relationship between painting and architecture, reflecting the idea of sanuk (a Thai concept of fun) that often characterised his work.

For this building, Jumsai adopted an anthropomorphic approach not only as a response to the postmodern movement in the 1980s and 1990s architecture but also as an experiment in which spatial conceptions—the creation of ‘deep’ and ‘shallow’ space, the depictions of ‘figure’ and ‘background’—were derived from a pictorial analysis of Cubist paintings.

Why we couldn’t include the work: It’s similar to displaying the work of MAC; we have many more archival materials of Jumai’s work than we could fit in the show. Instead, we chose to include the Bank of Asia (Robot Building) model because it was an earlier project that marked the beginning of Jumsai’s simultaneous critique and embrace of postmodernism. As one of the first skyscrapers in Bangkok’s central business district, the Robot Building is a much more iconic and recognisable edifice that has caught the imagination of artists and architects in Thailand and the rest of Asia.