Artist Talk: The Making of Move For?ward

What does disability-led art practice mean?

How can we be thinking about access in an artistic context during the pandemic?

This talk features the creative team behind , who will share the artistic processes behind this experiential artwork.

Join us to learn about their motivations, challenges, and insights that arose from their collaboration and co-creation with visually impaired persons.

A Q&A will follow the artist talk.

Speech-to-text interpretation (notetaking) is available for this event.

We are committed to making this event accessible to as many people as possible. If you require a specific accessibility arrangement, click here to let us know by submitting this form at least 10 days before the event. We will work with you to facilitate your requests.

Some accessibility arrangements that we can provide on request include but are not limited to:

- Singapore Sign Language interpretation

- Wheelchair access seating

- Assistance dog friendly seating

The event has limited capacity. Please email us at [email protected] if you can no longer attend, so that we can release the tickets for interested parties.

Email: [email protected]

Unseen Art Initiatives is a volunteer-led arts platform that aims to evoke and harness the creative potential of people through the arts. We enable collaborations between professional and emerging disabled artists across creative industries and with schools, community organisations and public institutions. Our flag-ship projects include Unseen: Constellations (2014 - 2016), a mentorship programme for visually-imapired youth and Unseen: Shift Lab (2015) a collaborative project with Dialogue-in-the-Dark Malaysia and artists from Kuala Lumpur. Our platform also developed research for the pilot Touch Art Collection for the Singapore Art Museum, researching accessibility practices for visually-impaired patrons in museums.

Panel Moderator

Alecia Neo develops long-term projects which involve collaboration with individuals and communities. Her socially engaged practice unfolds primarily through photography, video, and participatory workshops that address modes of radical hospitality, caregiving, and wellbeing. Her recent projects include ramah-tamah (2020), a dance film commissioned by the Asian Civilisations Museum, and Modern Resonance: Power to the People (2019), a site-specific art installation commissioned by Goethe-Institut Singapore. She is currently working on Care Index, an experimental platform that collects and features diverse practices of care performed by people from all walks of life. She is the founder of Unseen Art Initiatives and co-founder of Brack, a platform for socially engaged art and collaborative practices.

Claire Teo, Lead Artist

Claire Teo is the first visually impaired person to have graduated from a professional theatre course in Singapore in 2019, (LASALLE College of the Arts’ Diploma in Performance). She is closely mentored by Artist-Educator and Disability Arts Specialist, Peter Sau in her artistic endeavors. Since then, she saw the need for more communities to access arts education and has been developing and teaching drama curriculums for persons with diverse abilities. She is now the Academic Director of Talent Academy (a division of Singapore Raffles Music College), which aims "Towards Unwavering Artistic Excellence for all". As part of PLAYInc Pte Ltd, she is the scriptwriter and director of several assembly school show programmes, an episodic sitcom and a children's storytelling series called "The Classics Retold".

She wishes to work closely with her fellow disabled artists to break new artistic ground and champion the disability arts scene towards true inclusive practice; creating art with different communities that would empower and encourage awareness and social change.

Kira Lim, Key Collaborating Artist

Kira Lim, 22, is a contemporary classical soprano under the tutelage of Ms Khor Ai Ming. She placed first for all categories (Classical/Folk/Opera) in the American Protege Vocal Competition 2018 and was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall, New York City. She has also sung as a soloist in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. In 2019, Kira graduated from Lasalle College of The Arts with a Diploma in Performance. In 2016, she attained a Distinction in the Trinity College London Advanced Performance Certificate. Kira was involved in the 2019’s SIFA production of Oreste by Ifigenia directed by Tan Shou Chen. She has performed several times with many established conductors, including - Joshua Tan, Alice Farnham, Tsung Yeh and Justin Freer on a range of significant works for chorus and orchestra, including Berstein’s Chichester Psalms, John Rutter’s Mass of the Children, Howard Shore’s music for Lord of the Rings and Liu San Jie - Musical Film Concert.

Amongst Kira’s numerous teaching appointments, she has served as an assistant instructor to The Lighthouse School Choir, which performs regularly with The Purple Symphony led by Mr Quek Ling Kiong.

Clarence is a Singaporean music composer who has produced soundscapes and movie film scores for works in China, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the United States and Singapore since 2011. A history graduate from the National University of Singapore, he took an uncommon path after completing his education to pursue music performance and composition in the advertising industry. Professionally, Clarence has also been a user experience strategist and business analyst in the technology sector. Apart from his music compositions, Clarence has also represented Singapore as music director in the Chengdu International Twin Sisters Cities Music Festival in 2015, won first place in a design hackathon for mixed-reality mapping solutions and designed Singapore’s first peer-to-peer solar energy trading platform. His interests these days lie in how technology can be ethically adopted by people to improve their lives and well-being.

Samuel Woo, Installation Artist and Design Lead

Designer by day, overthinker by night, Samuel enjoys turning thoughts into art and stories that make people muse a little too. He is also one-third of “Foundin”, an interdisciplinary art collective known for their interactive projects- “If Stars Could Talk”, “Love Lives Here” and “Foundin”, works that focus on building rainbows and bridging differences.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

National Gallery Singapore Auditorium, National Gallery Singapore Auditorium, Singapore, Singapore