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Local artist's work makes it to US festival

SINGAPORE — For the first time, a local artist’s work at this year’s i Light Marina Bay festival will find an audience overseas. In fact, the installation, Moonflower, will be shown in the United States ahead of the i Light festival here.

SINGAPORE — For the first time, a local artist’s work at this year’s i Light Marina Bay festival will find an audience overseas thanks to a collaboration between i Light organisers and festivals abroad. In fact, the installation, Moonflower, will be shown in the United States ahead of the i Light festival here.

Moonflower — a piece comprising 800 wire mesh flowers lit by solar-powered LED bulbs — by industrial designer and National University of Singapore graduate, Lee Yun Qin, will be shown at the Scottsdale Canal Convergence 2017, a four-day festival in Arizona that begins on Feb 23.

Her work will travel as part of a first-time collaboration and exchange programme between i Light Marina Bay (which opens here on March 3) and the Amsterdam Light Festival in The Netherlands, the Bella Skyway Festival in Poland and the Scottsdale Canal Convergence 2017.

Lee, 36, said that for any artist, the possibility of showing their work abroad pushes them while in the process of conceptualisation and creation.

“It challenges us to think beyond our comfort zones and also take an interest in issues and art around the world,” she said.

In Singapore, Lee’s luminescent display of solar-powered flowers will be on show at The Promontory @ Marina Bay. She said: “I wanted to create this surreal and enthralling experience by inviting visitors to walk through the garden and be amazed by what solar technology can actually do.”

Visitors to the i Light festival, which opens on March 3, can choose to “adopt” one of her flowers and bring it home for a fee of $5. The money raised will be donated to the Garden City Fund which supports sustainable projects such as preserving Singapore's biodiversity.

When asked about i Light’s collaboration with international festivals, i Light festival curator Randy Chan said that the five-year event, organised by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, has always had its sights on taking works abroad.

“It’s important for local artists to see this platform as a valuable one for them to showcase their works both internationally and locally. (The collaboration with international festivals) helps to create space for them abroad. That space is important because it’s about exposure, but it’s also about getting this whole network of connections for the artist,” he said.

This year’s i Light Marina Bay 2017 event will feature installations based on the theme of Light & Nature. Out of the 20 works, nine are from Singapore artists and educational institutions.

Other local artists and designers in the spotlight at this year’s festival include Singapore-based design consultancy Colours: Collectively Ours, which collaborated on a piece called Dande-lier with Web Structure — founded by Dr Hossein Rezai, the first engineer to receive the Designer of the Year 2016 accolade as part of President’s Design Award. Sited at the Esplanade waterfront, Dande-lier with Web Structure is an installation made of umbrellas shaped collectively to form a huge dandelion, into which visitors can walk. The designers hope that the “warped” view from within might just change your view of the world.

Also included are large-scale light installation works by students from institutions such as Nanyang Polytechnic’s School of Interactive & Digital Media, the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), Raffles College of Higher Education, LaSalle College of the Arts and McNally School of Fine Arts.

Singapore audiovisual collective Syndicate, will be projecting an ambitious work — an Instagram-worthy facade projection on the Art Science Museum.

Safuan Johari, 35, a member of Syndicate, said that looking at the projection will be akin to viewing the universe through an abstract observatory.

The piece, Secret Galaxies, will explore our relationship with the night sky, he said. He hopes that the work will reflect humanity’s relationship with the cosmos, from planets to stars and even astrology.

“We have always hoped to be part of a festival of such a scale and have been eyeing the facade of ArtScience Museum as a canvas to work on,” he added.

 

i Light Marina Bay will run from March 3 to 26, 7.30pm to 11pm daily (with an extension to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays), around the Marina Bay waterfront promenade. Admission is free. Visit www.ilightmarinabay.sg for more information.

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