ABOUT
Biography
Jake Michael Singer (b. 1991, Johannesburg) is a transdisciplinary
artist whose practice explores materiality, myth, and catharsis.
Singer has presented internationally in both solo and group con-
texts. His solo exhibition Ten Thousand Things was staged at the
1,600-year-old Yedikule Hisarı during the Istanbul Biennale, and
in 2021 he produced the large-scale site-specific installation The
Bennu Stasis at the Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hamamı, Istanbul. Other solo
exhibitions include THK Gallery, Cape Town (2024 and 2019); Gallery
Tiny, New York (2020); Matter Gallery, Toronto (2018); Kalashnikovv
Gallery, Johannesburg (2018); and Punt WG, Amsterdam (2017).
He has also participated in notable group exhibitions at insti-
tutions and public spaces including the Norval Foundation, Iziko
South African National Gallery, Nirox Foundation, Zeitz MOCAA, Ru-
pert Museum, Kampala Biennale (curated by Simon Njami), St Antoine
Church (Istanbul), Red Bull Hangar-7 (Salzburg), and the Dubai In-
ternational Financial Centre.
Singer holds a degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Uni-
versity of Cape Town (2013), and has studied at Central Saint Mar-
tins, London. He is the recipient of the Eduardo Vila Foundation
Grant (2016–2017).
His public sculptures include Merzigo Murmur (Istanbul, 2022); Two-
ism (Dubai International Financial Centre, 2021); Dawn Chorus (RMB
Think Precinct, Johannesburg, 2019); and Roark’s Evacuation Plan
(August House, Johannesburg, 2016).
Residencies include programmes in Istanbul, Amsterdam, Kampala, and
Cologne. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Singer founded the
Emergence Art Prize with Rand Merchant Bank to support emerging
South African artists.
Recent projects include participation in the 17th Dakar Biennale
(2024) and an installation at the Great Pyramids of Giza with Art
D’Egypt, supported by AWC Gallery (2024).
In 2025, in with House of Arts, Salzburg, Singer installed sculp-
tures for the Salzburg Global Summit at Schloss Leopoldskron and at
the Formula One Paddock Club.
Singer is represented globally by House of Arts, Salzburg.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025
• Marmara Moon, Norval Foundation
• Monumental Murmur(AURORA), Schloss Leopoldskron
2024
• We will meet again in the sky, Great Pyramids of Giza Art D’Egypte
• Sunrise murmur 17th Dakar Biennale, Palais de Justice
2023
• There was humming in the air, Merzigo, Istanbul
2022
• Ten Thousand Things, Yedikule Hisarı, official collateral project of 17th Istanbul Biennal
2021
• Bennu Stasis, Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hamamı, Istanbul
In the light, Muse Contemporary, Istanbul
2019
• In Murmurs, THK Gallery, Cape Town
• Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, Matter Gallery
2018
• But A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise, Matter Gallery, Toronto
• But A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg
2017
• Pale Stability, Punt WG, Amsterdam
• RGB Sky, Hazard Gallery, Johannesburg
• Nest Collective and Jake Michael Singer, Matter Gallery, Toronto
• No Longer and Not Yet, 50 Golbourne Gallery, London
2016
• Catastrophes, Hazard Gallery, Johannesburg 2013
• Vestiges of Development, Michaelis Grad Show, Cape Town
PUBLIC WORKS
• There Is Humming In The Air, Merzigo, Istanbul, 2022
• Dawn Chorus, RMB Think Precinct, Johannesburg, 2019
• Roarks Evacuation Plan, W+A Building, Johannesburg, 2016
RESIDENCIES
• Quartier am Hafen, Cologne, 2022
• Kampala Biennale, Kampala, 2018
• AirWG, Amsterdam, 2017
• Nirox Foundation, Cradle of Humankind, Johannesburg, 2014
PRIZES & AWARDS
Eduardo Villa Foundation Grant, 2017
STUDIO
Singer’s studio goal is to create a condition where people can come together and work meaningfully.
Singer’s practice is highly collaborative, working part time and full time with up to eleven people of varying backgrounds and skills. Architects, welders, engineers, industrial designers, electricians and everyday magicians.
Together they are able to accomplish projects that involve nuanced fabrication, engineered design and radical material experimentation. This challenges the contemporary art trope that portrays African art making as crude or raw.
Singer’s practice takes political and social ideologies and, using mathematical strategies, connects it to the sublime. His aesthetic language often employs notions of entropy and links it with greater social etymologies such as myth and symbol. The aim is to make an object that offers the audience an enchanting gaze and, thereafter, allows meaning to unfold between the individual, society, science, and the imperceptible substrate of universal awareness.
“This offers a way of domesticating and conquering the unseen and inexplicable, a strategy that best engages with the difficulty of our times, finding stasis between order and chaos”, as Dr Ashraf Jamal writes about Singer’s practice “Discord, chaos, and the inevitability of breakdown is a lamentation we cannot afford to indulge” and that when encountering Singer’s work, Jamal was looking at “a fallout – the aftermath of a blast, a world remaindered, without a governing centrifuge. For some this might suggest the apocalyptic, for (Jamal) it also suggested a post post-industrial baroque, because the baroque is an art form with no core center of gravity, an art that hurdles, leaps, breaks the visual and sound barrier.”
Singer brings baroque gesture and contemporary subject together in the democratic hope of resonating equally with both Hume’s ideal critic and the laymen of Johannesburg.