6 & 7 Jan 2023: 7:30 pm
13 & 14 Jan 2023: 8:30 pm

How might art-making motivate us to invigorate our memories and our attachments to spaces we call home? Join artist Priscilla Quek and curator Fajrina Razak on an intimate tour of The Multifaceted Corners of #05-478. Audiences will be led through, and are invited to participate in this walk-and-talk sharing session.

About Priscilla Quek

Priscilla Quek WT (b.1993) is an artist and art educator who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) from Lasalle College of Fine Arts, and a double Diploma in Arts Teaching from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and National Institute of Education (NIE). Priscilla’s interest and practice revolves around sentimentality and nostalgia, exploring ways of recreating familiar spaces and scenes through forms of drawing, painting, and textiles. Her works emerge from fiction and set-ups, using the nature of common materials to draw attention to appreciating the every-day in intimate ways.

About Fajrina Razak

Fajrina Razak (b. 1989) is a Singaporean visual artist, art educator and curator whose practice concerns the notion of individuality and cultural identities while being driven by the aspects of emotions, traditions and spirituality. Working primarily with batik, her works are also translated across mediums such as image-making, installation and text-based art. Recent projects include hosting a residency programme @405artresidency and a curatorial project Between the Living and the Archive. Her works are in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum and private collections. She was the President of Angkatan Pelukis Aneka Daya(APAD, Association of Artists of Various Resources) in the term 2020-22.

Rating: Advisory (Some Mature Content and Coarse Language)
Recommended for 16 years and above

The return home and a parting gift.
Three friends on a ghost-hunting adventure, but one is left stranded alone… or is she?
An attempt to bring back a dead family member that went eerily wrong.

Following the success of the 2021 edition of Cherita Hantu, The Arts House collaborates with Hafidz Abdul Rahman once again to present Cherita Hantu...Kembali (Ghost Stories…Return). With an overarching theme of ‘the great return’, Cherita Hantu...Kembali follows the journey of four individuals through five stories, all entwined into one creepy showcase. Are you brave enough to join us?

Presented by Arts House Limited in collaboration with Hafidz Abdul Rahman, in conjunction with Textures 2023. Performed in Malay and English, with surtitles.

About Hafidz Abdul Rahman

Hafidz Abdul Rahman graduated from Lasalle College Of The Arts, majoring in Theatre Arts. He is a full time performer, content creator and arts educator. He has worked with various companies such as Teater Ekamatra, Checkpoint Theatre, Teater Kami, The Theatre Practice and many more. Recent works include Causeway, Lepak Live: Was-Wasan 2020, Performing Malay Sketches, Nerds Assemble and many others. He is also one half of Lepak One Korner, a wildly popular comedic duo online with the persona of Bonda Bedah and Mak Temah. 

Rating:
This Is Where I Won’t Be Alone - [Advisory (Some Mature Content)]
Counterfeit - General
The Java Enigma - General

3 pm: This is Where I Won’t Be Alone by Inez Tan | 5 pm: Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen | 8 pm: The Java Enigma by Erni Salleh

A Novel Idea is back! Lies and deceit, chasing answers across Asia, searching for one’s roots in an attempt to regain time, is what A Novel Idea: SingLit Edition has in store for its audience! Back again after a two-year Covid hiatus, the much talked about A Novel Idea will feature three popular novels by three Singaporean female writers: Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen, The Java Enigma by Erni Salleh and This Is Where I Won’t Be Alone by Inez Tan. Director Samantha Scott-Blackhall brings these novels to life on stage in a condensed dramatized reading, performed by award-winning actresses Serene Chen and Shafiqhah Efandi, who roll-up their sleeves to play ALL the various roles in the book! A literary treat not to be missed.

Duration: 40 minutes

About Samantha Scott-Blackhall

Samantha has worked in Singapore’s theatre industry for the last 20 years, and achieved critical acclaim as a Theatre Director, Artistic Director and Educator. She won the Life! Theatre Award in 2005 for Best Director and has received numerous nominations for the productions she has helmed. More recent credits include Tuesdays With Morrie by SRT, A Novel Idea by Arts House (2018-2020), Souvenir by Sing Theatre and Textures: SingLit, a 3-part Podcast series. A multi-dimensional artist, she has made strides not only in theatre, but also entrepreneurship and film. Samantha founded Blank Space Theatre in 2007, which received excellent audience reviews for productions including Das Experiment: Black Box, Freud’s Last Session and Red. As well as Lord of the Flies in collaboration with Sight Lines Entertainment. In 2007, her short film debut Turning Ten was one of five winning short films from Asia Pacific. Samantha is also a theatre educator at LASALLE College of the Arts, and has also taught at SOTA (School of the Arts) and NAFA (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts). On top of freelancing as a Theatre Director, Samantha served as Programme Director at Gateway Arts from 2018-2020. She is now Artistic Director of the arts company, which is committed to nurturing children and youth through the Performing Arts. Directing credits under Gateway Arts include I and You, Smartypants and the Swordfish, as well as digital-theatre production Behind the Wall. Her strength in storytelling and extensive experience working with actors makes her a versatile player in this ever-growing, creatively charged market. 

About Serene Chen

Serene Chen is a graduate of the National University of Singapore’s Theatre Studies programme. She is a three-time winner of the Straits Times Life Theatre Awards for Best Supporting Actress, for Landmarks: Asian Boys Volume 2 (Wild Rice, 2004), 8 Women (S’ing Theatre, 2014) and Public Enemy (Wild Rice, 2016). Other recent stage credits include The Son and This Is What Happens To Pretty Girls by Pandemonium; Framed, by Adolf, and Wong Kar Wai Dreams (The Finger Players); Detention Katong (Dream Academy); The House of Bernarda Alba (Wild Rice), as well as Charged, and GRC for the Singapore Theatre Festival (Teater Ekamatra). In 2019, her assured performance in Caught (SRT) earned her a fourth nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the Straits Times Life Theatre Awards. In 2021, Serene took the lead role in The Sound Inside (SRT). 

On film, Serene starred in Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen’s 2006 award-winning Singapore Dreaming which is being streamed on Netflix. Other film credits include Ken Kwek’s Sex.Violence.Family Values; 3Meals, Paper House, Autograph Book, My Autograph Book, Singapore Panda, The Studio – The Songs that sung her, Pencil, A Paper Plane Ride Home, Strawberry Cheesecake, and Fiona, my friend on viddsee. On television, Serene has performed in 3 seasons of criminal series, Code of Law, Avenue 14, and television movies, Gone Case. She was also on HBO Asia’s Invisible Stories. Most recently, for The Substation’s Septfest 2022, Serene voiced Descent, a performance video produced by The Blue Statesmen. She was the co-host for the 2022 commission of Backlogues, an 8-part podcast on arts management in Singapore, co-produced by Centre 42, SingLit Station and Artwave.

About Shafiqhah Efandi

Shafiqhah Efandi is an actor/singer graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a BA (Hons) in Acting. Professionally, she has worked with Singaporean theatre directors Noor Effendy Ibrahim (akulah BIMBO SAKTI), Natalie Hennedige, Aidli ‘Alin’ Mosbit and many more. Last year, she was in ’Anak’ (Child) by Very Shy Gurl for Esplanade’s Pentas 2022 as well as ‘Bangsawan Gemala Malam’ by Teater Ekamatra for SIFA ’22. Besides working in theatre, she was also in the Netflix original series “Mr. Midnight” as Zihan. She is happy and grateful to be a part of this production. 

Re-turning is a new and powerful concept for thinking differently. Re-turning, in scholarship, refers to ‘slow scholarship’ and re-deliberating, re-flecting and re-considering. It is a re-turning and re-turning to the ‘same’ information and materials, so as to form, refine and re-create new and deeper understandings, which include multiplicities of realities and multilayers of meanings. Here, we return to, and reflect on, the concept of home again and again, in different languages and through different lenses.

This multilingual and multi-disciplinary poetry recital will portray a Re-turning and journeying back to our physical and psychological home – be it a post-Covid Singapore or our beloved domesticity and belonging. Through multilingual poetry readings of thought- provoking local poems, and with corresponding multilingual calligraphic performances brought to you for the first time on stage locally, this event features four renowned local poets, and will be presented in our four official languages.

Performed by: AP Tan Chee Lay, Dr Azhar Ibrahim, K. Kanagalatha and Eric Tinsay Valles.

About AP Tan Chee Lay

Scholar-writer Tan Chee Lay works as an associate professor at the National Institute of Education in the day, and writes Chinese creative writing, calligraphy and paints in the night. A founding member of Poetry Festival Singapore and a judge of the Cultural Medallion and Southeast Asian Writers Award, he was conferred the Young Artist Award, Singapore Youth Award, Golden Point Award, and Singapore Literature Prize.

He enjoys researching into Nanyang literati and artists, and launched Facebook and YouTube pages VeryNanyang, to share and promote Nanyang cultures. A prolific writer of various genres, he has published over 20 books of poetry, children’s picture books, short stories and prose, with the latest being Poems from the Eternal Summer, published by China Times Publishing, Taiwan, in August 2022.

About Dr Azhar Ibrahim

Azhar Ibrahim is a Lecturer and Deputy Head at the Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore (NUS). He holds a PhD and teaches Malay-Indonesian literature and ideologies of development. His research interests include sociology of religion, sociology of literature and critical literacy, and the Malay-Indonesian intellectual development. His published books include Historical Imagination and Cultural Responses to Colonialism and Nationalism: A Critical Malay(sian) Perspective (2017), and Menyanggah Belenggu Kerancuan Fikiran Masakini (2016).

About K. Kanagalatha

Kanagalatha (Latha) has published three collections of poetry in Tamil: Theeveli (Firespace) (2003), Paampuk Kaattil Oru Thaazhai (A Screwpine in Snakeforest) (2004) and Yaarukkum Illaatha Paalai (No man’s desert) 2016. She has also published two short story collections Nan kolai Seyium penkkal (Women I Murder) in 2007, which won the biennial Singapore Literature Prize in 2008 and Chinalatchumi in 2022. The English translation of her short story collection;The Goddess in the Living Room published in 2014. Her poems and short stories have been published in several anthologies and various Tamil literary journals in in India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and France. Her works have been translated into English, French and German. Her bilingual poems Still Human was also featured in the MRT: Poems on the Move series on the MRT trains by the National Arts Council (1996), Karanguni was displayed in the MOVING WORDS 2011 showcasing Singaporean literature on the MRT network by TheLiterary Centre (2011). She has edited, Letters from grandma and grandpa (Published by NLB, 2008) G.Sarangapany’s Literary Leagacy, (Published by NAC & Tamil Murasu, 2013). Kanagalatha is one of the founding directors for Poetry Festival Singapore. She is currently the Associate editor of Tamil Murasu, Singapore’s Tamil daily newspaper.

About Eric Tinsay Valles

Eric Tinsay Valles has published the poetry collections A World in Transit and After the Fall: dirges among ruins as well as co-edited Get Lucky: An Anthology of Singapore and Philippine Writings, Sg Poems 2015-2016, The Nature of Poetry, and other anthologies. He has won a Goh Sin Tub Creative Writing prize as well as the Illumination and the ELit Book Awards. He has been invited to read poetry or commentaries at Baylor, Melbourne, and Oxford Universities. He is a director of Poetry Festival (Singapore).
Find him on Instagram and Facebook at @eric.valles1 and on TikTok at @ericvalles_1.

Art installation by Vince Ong

One definition of dwelling that architects consider is a home with the hearth at its core. It shelters and nourishes the tired bodies, it comforts and heals the broken hearts, and it warms the souls of many to come. Imagine a dwelling that gathers chit & chatter, filled with deep throated mirth, newspaper rustling, giggles and laughs, a soft humming. Dwelling explores the archetype of a house, with core light bringing people together, to feed, to protect and to raise their spirits. The copper rods interact to create a consistent and persistent reverberation of that togetherness. Making aware that we are all but one and one in all in the wave of existence.

Dwelling is architect Vince Ong's response to Yeow Kai Chai’s One to the Dark Tower Comes.

About Vince Ong

Archetypes are powerful. It has the ability to identify trauma, the capacity to validate one’s nature and the power to heal. It is a subject that occupies much of VOCH’s study into the realm of living & healing; spaces that protect, comfort and nourishes.

Instinctively, this interest led him to study architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture London (AA), UK. Those years saw him working in a fresh fish grocer in Chinatown New York, making films about forgotten spaces, and designing architectural ornaments reflecting the diverse methods of reproduction in natural history, Total Work Of Nature.

He worked at Foster+Partners in London and WOHA Architects in Singapore before founding his own design studio EBON.

Dwelling is an exploration and an attempt to represent the alchemy of living & healing.

Multifaceted Corners of #05-478, a solo exhibition by Priscilla Quek is a recreation of the artist’s parental home into an installation constructed of cut-outs, mimicking stage-like props set. Translating her inspirations from family’s old photographs into this immersive installation yet muted neutral colours, the works are placed and displaced among the cornered spaces as the artist contemplates recollecting hazy childhood memories. Tracing back to past experiences through this art-making form is the artist’s method of sentimental mnemonics. The works staged here, explore the dimensionality of the installation presented within the gallery space. This poetic-image installation invites viewers to occupy the space and find resonance in their relationship with their own home and its objects while reminiscing about their daily interactions within their homes.

This visual art exhibition is curated by Fajrina Razak and is a presentation by The Substation as part of Textures 2023.

About Priscilla Quek

Priscilla Quek WT (b.1993) is an artist and art educator who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) from Lasalle College of Fine Arts, and a double Diploma in Arts Teaching from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and National Institute of Education (NIE). Priscilla’s interest and practice revolves around sentimentality and nostalgia, exploring ways of recreating familiar spaces and scenes through forms of drawing, painting, and textiles. Her works emerge from fiction and set-ups, using the nature of common materials to draw attention to appreciating the every-day in intimate ways.

About Fajrina Razak

Fajrina Razak (b. 1989) is a Singaporean visual artist, art educator and curator whose practice concerns the notion of individuality and cultural identities while being driven by the aspects of emotions, traditions and spirituality. Working primarily with batik, her works are also translated across mediums such as image-making, installation and text-based art. Recent projects include hosting a residency programme @405artresidency and a curatorial project Between the Living and the Archive. Her works are in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum and private collections. She was the President of Angkatan Pelukis Aneka Daya(APAD, Association of Artists of Various Resources) in the term 2020-22.

Rating: General

A reading by Sofia Mariah Ma, Dr Aaron Ho and Kurien Kalarickal of the Golden Point Award 2021 English Short Story winning works - Handwriting, The Shadow Box and We Need to Move... Again.

Handwriting
A short story about the things that we inherit and the things we learn and how it shapes an important part of our identity.

The Shadow Box
The Shadow Box is a short story exploring the deep, complex relationship between two sisters, evolving through time, memory and trauma, and told through the fate of their once-beloved plaything—a miniature, box version of a shadow play theatre.

We Need to Move... Again
TBC

About Sofia Mariah Ma

Sofia Mariah Ma is a Singaporean writer. She was the Regional winner for Asia for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and placed second in the 2021 Golden Point Award—Short Story Category. She holds an MA in English Literature and will be embarking on her PhD in Writing next year. Currently, she is working on a young adult novel inspired by her Javanese origins. For more details, find her on IG @sofiamoxie or visit her website: https://sofiamariahma.com/

About Kurien Kalarickal

Kurien moved from Cochin to Singapore, alone when he was 15. After a meandering career path spanning a few careers and countries, he is now a Business Analyst for a local software firm. He doesn't care to be the best at one thing and does a lot of this and thats in photography, linguistics, sketching, singing, design, and he will stop the list here to look classy. He tries.

Join Yeo Wei Wei in this session as she reads excerpts from her most recent publication, Clan - a hybrid collection of stories and translations based on Soon Ailing's fiction.