For Wan Hai Hotel: Singapore Strait, multi-disciplinary Filipino artist Joshua Serafin presented the transoceanic ritual-performance Relics: An Eye Once Blind at The Warehouse Hotel, Singapore. Staged from 21 to 30 January 2026, the work unfolded within a twelve-day transformation of the hotel into a site for performances, installations, conversations, film screenings, and other encounters.
Tracing a lost Japanese-Filipino warrior lineage through movement, myth, and memory, Relics: An Eye Once Blind delves into forgotten narratives and the disappearance of an identity once tied to an assumed warrior lineage. Through the figure of their great-great-grandfather, a first-generation Japanese migrant worker who moved to the Philippines in 1930, Serafin creates new forms of ritual and embodiment that confront the body as an evolving vessel for loss and reinvention. The work brings to the surface questions of identity, transmigration, states of being, and ways of inhabiting the body.
Alongside the performance, Serafin developed new sculptures based on Philippine pre-colonial weapons and artefacts as integral elements of the work. Reimagining the function and symbolism of weaponry, these objects are conceived not as instruments of destruction, but as forms capable of healing, growth, and rejuvenation. Serafin also collaborated with Innerraum and Kuboraum to create a costume for the Singapore presentation.
Curated by X Zhu-Nowell, Wan Hai Hotel: Singapore Strait explored archipelagic thinking, maritime identity, and oceanic forms of relation. Featuring more than twenty artists from Singapore, Southeast Asia, and the Asia-Pacific, the concept-exhibition considered bodies of water not as borders, but as networks of relation, memory, and movement. Originally staged at Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai in 2024, Wan Hai Hotel continued its oceanic voyage to the Singapore Strait, a historical epicentre of sea-bound commerce where shipping, finance, labour migration, surveillance, and extractive economies converge.
Part of Singapore Art Week 2026, Wan Hai Hotel: Singapore Strait was organised by ART SG and Rockbund Art Museum, and supported by the National Arts Council, Singapore Tourism Board, and ROCKBUND.
Joshua Serafin’s appearance and the development of new sculptural works for Relics: An Eye Once Blind were supported by M Art Foundation, extending its long-standing support of Asian artists and, in recent years, its focus on Southeast Asia.
Opening Reception of Wan Hai Hotel: Singapore Strait at The Warehouse Hotel, Singapore, 2026. Photographed by Vamos Photography. Image courtesy Rockbund Art Museum and ART SG.
Joshua Serafin (b. 1995, Philippines / Belgium) is a multi-disciplinary artist working across dance, performance, visual art, and choreography. Born in the Philippines and currently based in Brussels, their practice explores identity, transmigration, queer politics and representation, states of being, and ways of inhabiting the body. Through performance, installation, video, and photography, Serafin develops new forms of ritual and embodiment informed by queer ecologies, while examining Filipino identity, histories, and the enduring effects of Western and colonial ideologies.
Serafin trained in dance in the Philippines and Hong Kong, and at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, and completed their bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Visual Arts at KASK in Ghent. They are a house artist at VIERNULVIER for the 2023–27 seasons. Their work has been presented internationally at Esplanade, Singapore; BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen; ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival, Kuopio; Beursschouwburg, Brussels; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; Haus der Kulturen der Welt and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; Tono Festival, Mexico City; and Amant, New York. Serafin participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, where VOID (video installation), VOID (live performance), and PEARLS were presented as part of Foreigners Everywhere.