One Day We’ll Understand

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 and the future. 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.

Created by a Singaporean-Australian creative team with direction by Tamara Saulwick and video design by Nick Roux, 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 Understandtranscends 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.

One Day We’ll Understand is a CultureLink Singapore production in partnership with Chamber Made commissioned by Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.

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