Spotlight on SAW 2022 Light to Night Festival
Singapore Art Week’s Light to Night Festival is bigger and better than ever this year, electrifying the Civic District with visual spectacles and interactive art experiences around the theme, ‘New Ways of Seeing, Thinking and Being’, which relates to the new situation we find ourselves in due to the pandemic.
Light to Night is spearheaded by National Gallery Singapore (NGS) with the assistance of the Asian Civilisations Museum, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, The Arts House, Victoria Theatre & Concert Hall, and new collaborators including the National Library Board, Capitol Singapore and Funan.
The festival’s online programmes include artist talks as part of SAW Dialogues, music performances, exclusive behind the scenes footage, and more. Get more information on the full suite of hybrid offerings here. You can also follow Light to Night on Facebook (@LTN22) and Instagram (@lighttonightsg).
In the meantime, here is The A List guide to the 2022 phygital (physical and digital) format day and night attractions, many of which throw a spotlight on emerging creative talents and on the visually impaired.
1. Visions @ NGS, St Andrews Road
Until 31 Mar/all day

Light to Night’s first collaboration with augmented reality (AR) powerhouse Acute Art resulted in this cutting-edge interactive outdoor show featuring a new commission by Ho Tzu Nyen titled Language and AR pieces by Cao Fei (China), Olafur Eliasson (Denmark) and AR art hot property KAWS (a.k.a. New Yorker Brian Donnelly). Unlock these experiences along the Gallery’s façade and see the Civic District as you have never seen it before. Find out more about Visions here.
2. Move For?ward (Unseen: Inside Out) @ NGS, City Hall Wing, B1
Until 3 Feb/10am–7pm weekdays; 10am–10pm at weekends

Unseen Art Initiatives’ disability-led project combines the talents of performance artist Claire Teo, singer Kira Lim, music composer Clarence Chung, designer Samuel Woo and a dozen visually impaired co-creators. It is a multi-sensory immersive installation rooted in the lives of visually impaired people in Singapore. Register for Move For?ward here.
3. Art and technology presentations at Y-Lab @ NGS, City Hall wing, B1
Until 3 Feb/10am–7pm weekdays; 10am–10pm at weekends)

There are a trio of AR installations at Y-Lab: An Imagined Past by Yanni Chia; An Other Face (pictured) by Tang Ling Nah with Benjamin Low, Looi Wan Ping and Lee Sze-Chin; and Sonic Archive by Ong Kian Peng. Chia explores the nexus of surrealism, illusion and reality while Ong has createdan interactive sound sequencer that takes the form of a conveyor belt-like contraption. Objects, characters, and motifs from works in the Gallery’s collection are transformed into 3D-printed models that trigger a unique sound sample when scanned. An Other Face is a 360° VR video that morphs selected artworks from the Gallery’s collection, using animation and real-life action as it explores realism and abstraction in art.
4. The Everyday Vinyl @ Art Connector
Until 3 Feb/24 hours a day

Stroll along the Art Connector, a walkway that leads festivalgoers from City Hall MRT, to enjoy The Everyday Vinyl, a tapestry of discarded plastic made by DASSAD that repurposes single-use disposable vinyl as art.
5. Making Room @ Singapore Courtyard
Until 30 Jun/National Gallery Singapore opening hours

The Gallery’s Singapore Courtyard houses Making Room, where you can take in a 360° perspective of a hanging installation at various levels.
6. Flight @ the Padang
Until 3 Feb/10am–midnight

Flight, by LiteWerkz, is an interactive piece inspired by the flight of birds. It responds to Bluetooth signals emitted from mobile devices to generate a symphony of light and colour.
7. Fragment of a Shoreline @ the Padang
Until 3 Feb/10am–midnight

Fragment of a Shoreline by Spatial Anatomy and Akai Chew with OFTRT takes us to the 19th century with a digital reconstruction of the shoreline in the distant days when Beach Road really was on the beach.
8. Curiocity: Places & Perspectives @ National Library Building and Civic District
Until 3 Feb/various

Light to Night has teamed up with National Library Board to expand the festival footprint in 2022 and the result is Curiocity: Places & Perspectives, with installations at the Asian Civilisations Museum, Esplanade Park, The Arts House, and a light installation at the National Library Building plaza.
9. Sticki 2022: Funan Underground Pedestrian Link
Until 22 Feb/5.30am–12.30am

Co-commissioned by National Gallery Singapore and Funan for Light to Night, Sticki 2022 mimics the emotional rollercoaster we have been through during the pandemic, inspired by the role stickers have played in official rule-making and public information campaigns.
10. Art Skins on Monuments @ NGS façade
Until 3 Feb/7.30pm–midnight

Refractioned by Metamo Industries with sound by Benedict & Palmer is a cyberpunk journey through the multiverse created using proprietary real-time image synthesis techniques. It blends photographs of HDB façades with images of iconic Singaporean architecture made during the 2020 circuit breaker. The creators promise a transcendental journey that opens doors to new perceptions of time and space.
11. Into Multiplicities @ NGS Supreme Court Wing façade
Until 3 Feb/Mon to Thu 5.30–7pm; Fri to Sun 5.30–10pm

Into Multiplicities looks at the unexplored realms of archived information that is collected across time, languages, and individuals. The work, by Intriguant and Jo Ho, references The Library of Babel, a novel by Jorge Luis Borge, which posits the idea of an infinite library containing every possible sentence.
12. Fleeting Flights @ The Arts House façade
Until 3 Feb/7.30pm–midnight

Students at Nanyang Polytechnic’s School of Design & Media, mentored by Brandon Tay and Safuan Johari and with sound design by Safuan Johari, take us on a great escape from the quotidien in Fleeting Flights – opening new doors and setting up new obstacles and challenges.
13. Elusive Études @ Victoria Concert Hall Theatre façade
Until 3 Feb/7.30pm–midnight

Tay and Johari also worked with another set of Nanyang Poly School of Design & Media students to create Elusive Études, an installation grappling with life’s trials and tribulations and how to overcome them with new roads to self-discovery.
14. Gallery Gigs @ Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium
22 and 29 Jan/8pm–9.15pm and online

Live music is back! Gallery Gigs (LIVE!) and Gallery Gigs bring you pretty much everything from acoustic to electronic. The live versions, staged at the Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium at NGS, are all sold out, but you can still catch many concerts online.
15. Kolektif Takeover @ NGS City Hall Wing
Until 3 Feb/every Fri and Sat

What would happen if you allowed yourself to fully imagine a new way of living? Come Imagine With Me might give you some pointers. Take a walk with a stranger or a friend through NGS and let your imagination run wild. Listen, learn and imagine at this gallery walk and journalling session. Another component of Kolektif is Pantun Pitstop. Armed with no more than a piece of paper and a pencil, unleash your creativity in a fun and casual ambience, and connect with others through poetry. The Art of Letting Go is designed to help you let go of negative emotions or experiences during a curated audio tour with interactive elements. Last but not least is IM/BALANCED, the perfect getaway from the stresses and strains of life. Bring your relationship with work into focus, tune into a personalised soundscape and express yourself through a creative exercise.
16. Art x Social @ NGS, Supreme Court Terrace
Until 30 Jan/every Sat and Sun 4–10pm

What does a festival village look like in the post-pandemic era? Map out new routes to self-actualisation in a fun, social way at Art x Social with craft activities, an aura photobooth, art journalling, personality-inspired claw machines and more to perk up your weekends during SAW. Local craft producers will also set up shop within the Gallery. Art x Social is the ideal spot for a small group gathering, an off-beat date night or a fun evening with the whole family.
17. The City Beneath The City @ The Arts House Lawn
Until 3 Apr/10am–10pm

Inspired by Jason Wee’s short story The City Beneath The City, this whimsical installation imagines a fantastical replica of Singapore, growing and building up under the actual city state we live in. Author Wee teams up with design firm WY-TO to make a strange environment in which nothing is destroyed and new buildings are added to the cityscape, over and through existing buildings.
18. The Same Side of the Moon Always Faces Earth @ The Arts House Lawn
Until 6 Feb/10am–10pm

An installation inspired by the migrant stories of seafarers who made their way to Singapore by sea for a better life decades and centuries ago, The Same Side of the Moon Always Faces Earth is a visual representation of the act of crossing a body of water to reach a destination.
19. Memory Portals @ Asian Civilisations Museum Green
Until 3 Feb/10am–midnight

Two glowing doorways represent alternate views of the Singapore River based on artist Debbie Ding’s 2010 work Here the River Lies. The audience back then was invited to contribute their memories, real or imaginary, to a large hand-drawn map of the river, and more than 1,700 stories were collected. Some of these contributions have now been re-interpreted as layers of memory, fantasy and storytelling in Memory Portals.
20. Kang Ouw @ Esplanade Tunnel
Until 1 May/all day

Kang Ouw expands upon Indonesian artist Boedi Widjaja’s preoccupation with the world of wuxia – the genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China – focusing here on Jin Yong’s novel Ode to Gallantry. Centred around a system of architectonic-numerical script devised by the artist, the work unfurls through banners, videos, sound and drawings.
21. d3ar succ3ss0r @ Esplanade Community Wall
Until 1 May/all day

Using found objects, clay and sand, Fazleen Karlan’s latest work d3ar succ3ss0r wonders how individuals from the future will see the remnants of our present-day civilisation.
22. Sender of Wishes @ Esplanade Concourse
Until 10 Jul/all day

Sender of Wishes is conceived as a cityscape with inhabitants represented by toy figures. The sculptural installation is an effort to offer a spark of optimism through this imaginary world, countering the general depression of the pandemic.
23. Microorganisms Landscape @ Esplanade Jendela Visual Arts Space
Until 1 May/Mon to Fri 11am–8.30pm; Sat, Sun and PH 10am–8.30pm

Microorganisms Landscape expresses Han Sai Por’s concern with the impact of human activity on the environment and the human relationship with nature through an installation that highlights the pivotal role of microorganisms in the natural world.
Find out more about the other ongoing SAW exhibitions here.