Visitors have been stealing eggplants from an art installation at National Gallery Singapore since the Still Life exhibit opened on 18 Jul 2025. The work features about 200 eggplants pinned to two walls, created by Singaporean artist Suzann Victor.
National Gallery Singapore confirmed the thefts on 1 Aug 2025. Staff won’t say how many purple fruits have gone missing or why people are taking them.
Gallery workers now check the wall-mounted piece regularly. Warning signs tell visitors not to touch the installation after the stealing started.
The artwork sits in the gallery’s revamped Singapore art history exhibition, Singapore Stories: Pathways And Detours In Art. It sticks out into the walkway outside DBS Singapore Gallery three on the second floor.
The gallery says the work has sparked curiosity among visitors. People snap photos and get up close to see it.
The eggplants will rot naturally and get replaced throughout the exhibition’s two-year run. This decay represents “authoritarian masculinity breaking down in plain sight,” according to exhibit notes.
From 1990s Performance to Gallery Walls
Suzann Victor first created Still Life in 1992 during a live performance at Parkway Parade. She stuck 100 brinjals on three black walls outside the shopping centre to jolt office workers awake during their morning rush.
The current version builds on Victor’s early work in kinetics and performance art. Each eggplant gets hand-painted with specific attention to colour and shine.
Victor explained the deeper meaning on 1 Aug 2025. The eggplants are placed deliberately and “try to defy gravity, but ultimately, gravity gets them.” She calls them “failing in a very profound sense.”
The artist wants people to move past what she calls an “essentialising way” of viewing art “that is ignorant.” Her work came before both the eggplant emoji and Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s famous banana piece Comedian.
Performance artist Tang Da Wu responded to the installation by dancing between the plants.
Online critics have questioned potential food waste since July. National Gallery Singapore donates all old eggplants to nonprofit Ground-Up Initiative for composting at their community farm. New ones go up monthly.
Art theft has hit Singapore before, usually involving public works outside galleries. In 2014, someone cut out a 30cm by 30cm piece of Casey Chen’s Prosperity Tunnel in the underground walkway between Jurong Point and Boon Lay Bus Interchange. The tunnel had wallpaper and stickers printed with currency images.
In 2000, Felicia Low’s Dragon sculpture vanished from outside Chinatown Complex. Parts turned up in a rubbish dump one block away. Thieves grabbed cheap epoxy body parts but left behind pricier acrylic mirror panels.
