One Day We'll UnderstandSim 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.

Led by a Singaporean-Australian creative team, 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 Understand transcends 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 with support from Footscray Community Arts.