“All identities are formed in and through movement; true home is not a return to a place, but the ability to maintain continuity amid constant change.”

— Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora

Over time, every space carries traces of migration, the will to take root, and the power of regeneration. The black-and-white bungalow at 7 Grange Road in Singapore, a colonial-era house, reflects the encounters and co-existence of multiple cultures on Nanyang soil. The Shifting Axis opens a dialogue across steppe and sea, tradition and contemporary, individual and community.

The exhibition follows the narrative method of Housing the Genesis—a Shanghai-based platform that treats space as method. It unfolds as a “twin spatio-temporal fold”: the enduring nomadic spirit of the Inner Mongolian steppe on one side, the syncretic aesthetics of Peranakan culture on Nanyang soil on the other.

These realms mirror each other through Migration–Rootedness–Regeneration: the circular cosmology of the ger resonates in the layered motifs of Nyonya ceramics; the harmonics of throat-singing echo the lace of kebayas and their sarongs. Together, they show how different civilizations build belonging through movement and reshape identity through change.

Through diverse media—including silverware, installation, painting, video, and performance—the participating artists engage with this nuanced grand narrative. Sai’s use of plugs and bulbs illuminates metaphors of adaptation; Zarina Muhammad’s ritual assemblages trace archipelagic kinship; Magsar Chinbat’s paintings render the epic sweep of steppe history; Yiyu Cao maps migratory paths through the metaphor of dandelion seeds; and Ba Yin Sheng Kun’s Beneath the Dome brooch interrogates the body and memory embedded within nomadic culture. Each work constitutes a subtle yet significant turn of the axis, an act of cultural translation.

More than a display, The Shifting Axis is a spatio-temporal experiment. It invites audiences into 7 Grange Road as a "living archive," to listen—amidst the winds of the plateau and the rains of the tropics—to stories of taking root amidst displacement and finding continuity in rupture. Here, the shifting axis heralds not a dissolution of order, but its transformation into new possibilities. In our collective flux, we become each other's horizon.