n oddly moving moment in the latest iteration of the Singapore Biennale was occasioned by a video of a playground being built in rural Jordan. Initiated by the collective Malaeb in the village of Umm Sayhoun, the project aimed to provide a community-oriented site that is “joyful, ethical, accessible and inclusive.” Strategies of social intervention and the language of universal inclusivity have become platitudes in the global circulation of contemporary art but here it was unexpectedly uplifting to consider what was taking place in a distant corner of the world. That (2022), featuring the children of a desert settlement “climbing over frames and shooting down slides as a direct result of a permanent project commissioned by the international art event” (according to newspaper), was displayed in a
