Events
Performance
One Day We’ll Understand
-
Joseph Nair – CultureLink Sg
-
Joseph Nair – CultureLink Sg
-
Joseph Nair – CultureLink Sg
-
Joseph Nair – CultureLink Sg
Performance
BOOK NOWOne Day We’ll Understand
Performance Dates: 27 February—1 March 2025
Event Information
“Sim Chi Yin’s miraculous counter-archive is brought to life …Ong’s percussive soundscape broadens the ambit of the story into something mythic … an epic journey.” The Straits Times
One Day We’ll Understand is a new multimedia performance exploring memory and inheritance through the compelling family history of visual artist Sim Chi Yin.
Set against the Malayan Emergency, the performance is part documentary and part speculative, examining how we contend with the past. Through the lens of Sim’s life and camera, we time travel into her family archive, recovering traces left in the wake of the anti-colonial war in British Malaya and beyond.
Led by a brilliant Singaporean-Australian creative team, the work combines haunting imagery with narration, archival footage and a driving live score by percussionist Cheryl Ong, to depict Sim’s multiple personas as artist, historian, writer, mother and granddaughter.
Drawing on Sim’s large body of work in film and photography, One Day We’ll Understand transcends the autobiographical to more universal experiences of memory, loss, trauma, restitution and repair. It unearths hidden histories, Chinese diasporic experiences and the long legacies of colonialism, opening up ways to think about our past and future.
Performance Dates: 27 February—1 March 2025
27 February 2025, 7—8pm: Opening Performance and Post-Show drinks
28 February 2025, 7—8pm: Performance followed by an Artist Talk
1 March 2025, 2—3pm & 7—8pm: Matinee and Performance
Artistic Team:
Concept / Performer: Sim Chi Yin
Sound / Performer: Cheryl Ong
Director: Tamara Saulwick
Dramaturg: Kok Heng Leun
Script/Photos/Videos: Sim Chi YIn
Video Artist: Nick Roux
Lighting Design: Andy Lim
Technical Manager: Yap Seok Hui
Producing Support: Kylie McRae (Australia)
Executive Producer: Goh Ching Lee
Presented by Footscray Community Arts, AsiaTOPA, and Arts Centre Melbourne in partnership with CultureLink Singapore and Chamber Made.
A CultureLink Singapore production in partnership with Chamber Made, commissioned by Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.
Date & Times
- When
-
Thursday 27 February 7:00 pm
Saturday 1 March 8:00 pm
- Venue
- Performance Space
- Cost
Concession: $40
General: $50
Supporter: $60
Accessibility
While our heritage building and outdoor spaces pose challenges, we’re actively seeking solutions and value your input. Our warehouse venues are wheelchair accessible, and we offer assistance for those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have speech impairments. Please call or email us if we can help plan your journey.
Phone: 03 9362 8888
Email: reception@footscrayarts.com
Meet the Artist
-
Sim Chi Yin
Sim Chi Yin is an artist from Singapore whose research-based practice uses artistic and archival interventions to contest and complicate historiographies and colonial narratives. She works across photography, film, installation, performance and book-making.
She has exhibited at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024) and at the Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023); the Barbican, London (2023); Camera Austria, Graz (2024); Harvard Art Museums, Boston, USA (2021); Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2021); Nobel Peace Museum, Oslo (2017), Datsuijo, Tokyo (2024); Arko Art Centre, Seoul (2016); Zilberman Gallery Berlin (2021); Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong (2019). She has also participated in the Istanbul Biennale (2022, 2017) and the Guangzhou Image Triennial (2021). Her work is in the collections of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Harvard Art Museums, M+ Hong Kong, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, Singapore Art Museum, and the National Museum Singapore. She was an artist fellow in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (2022-3) and is completing a PhD at King’s College London.
