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The Humane Agency
The Humane Agency
by John Tung
In times of unsettling change—of borders, climates, and belonging—it is not simply these shifts that defines us, but how we choose to respond. The Humane Agency traces the quiet force of artists who, through image and material, act not as chroniclers of crisis but as participants in the difficult, necessary work of compassion.
Here, the person is neither subject nor symbol, but a site of relation. Across a range of artistic media, the upcoming edition of S.E.A. Focus draws together practices that resist detachment. Instead, they insist on proximity: to histories unsettled, to environments imperilled, to lives in motion. The presentation emerges at the intersection of three global currents: the persistence of conflict and the longing for peace; the intensifying ecological crisis; and the movement of peoples across and beyond nation-states. Art, in this context, becomes a mode of attention—slowing perception, deepening feeling, and reanimating our capacity to care.
What binds these works is not a single message but a shared ethic: that empathy is neither ornamental nor optional. It is method. It is urgency. It is the first step toward imagining futures less estranged, less extractive, more entangled.
The humane, then, is not a theme but a horizon. And the artist—through acts of making, sensing, and remembering—becomes not only witness to the world, but a vital agent in its refiguring.
About the Curator
About the Curator
John Z. W. Tung is an independent curator and exhibition-maker. In his former position as an Assistant Curator at the Singapore Art Museum (2015 – 2020), he curated and co-curated 9 exhibitions, alongside serving as a co-curator for the Singapore Biennale 2016, 'An Atlas of Mirrors', and the Singapore Biennale 2019, ‘Every Step in the Right Direction’. Three of the artwork commissions he curated for the biennales were finalists for the Benesse Prize, with one work winning the prestigious award. He is also the editor of the Singapore Art Museum’s first publication to chronicle its exhibition history, Singapore Art Museum: An Index of Exhibitions (1994 – 2018). His recent appointments as an independent curator include Festival Curator for the 7th & 8th Singapore International Photography Festival (2020 & 2022), Associate Curator for the Open House programme, For the House; Against the House (2021, 2022 & 2023), and the Curator of the first exhibition to examine the significance of the ground-breaking Singaporean artist initiative 5th Passage – 5th Passage: In Search of Lost Time. Projects he has produced include The Forest Institute (2022), a large-scale architectural art installation dedicated to secondary forest ecologies, and The Gathering: 千岁宫 (2022), a pop-up Chinese garden-teahouse experience in Chinatown, Singapore. He was also curator of the 2024 & 2025 editions of the contemporary art platform S.E.A. Focus.
To date, his close work with artists has realised more than a hundred artwork commissions and site-specific adaptations across over 50 exhibitions. In 2023, he was the recipient of the inaugural Tan Boon Hui Curatorial Prize.
He holds a BA (Hons) in Arts Management awarded by Goldsmiths, University of London (at LASALLE College of the Arts) and an MA in Cultural Management from the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he graduated on the Dean’s List. He brings with him a decade of involvement across different fields in the arts, culture, and creative industry. Encompassing both creative and administrative roles, his experiences have spanned the curatorial, editorial, as well as pedagogical.
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