TBNG goes to Singapore Night Festival!

The Blue and Gold
Sep 5
7 min read

As night falls, the Bras Basah·Bugis district rumbles alive with dazzling lights, myths, dreams, and vibrant art. What lies beyond? Explore this new side of Singapore with our writers Cozette, Daniel, and Lu Yi!

Introduction

SMU’s The Blue and Gold was privileged with our inaugural invite to the exclusive Night Fest 2025 preview, and our group gathered at Cathay Green in high spirits below a cloudy sky, fingers crossed the skies would hold off the rain. As luck would have it, the downpour began halfway through the evening, but for now, the excitement was undiminished.

Sky Castle

This was where we commenced the exhibition. Sky Castle is not an exhibition unique to the Singapore Night Festival. In fact, this artwork might just be one more well-travelled than you. First displayed in Fed Square, Melbourne in 2020, it has since moved through cities like Melbourne, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, Brussels, Canada, Dubbo, Dubai, before arriving at the 2025 Night Fest on our shores. As part of the media preview, our team enjoyed complimentary access to the exhibit, which typically requires a $5 entry fee.

Walking around and through the arches, which emit dreamy tones and light was a therapeutic experience. By nightfall, the energy grew electric, ethereal, alive as more festival-goers wandered into the arches. The lights pulsed faster, the music swelled in intensity as more individuals stepped onto the artwork–a special interactive feature of the Sky Castle.

About the artist(s):

ENESS is a multi-award-winning art and technology studio founded in 1997, known for creating immersive, interactive public art to evoke connection in public spaces. Led by founder Nimrod Weis, ENESS transforms public environments worldwide with installations that invite curiosity, joy, and communal experiences.

MOSAIC

Next, we wandered over to the newly reopened National Museum of Singapore. Massive light projectors situated before the building project 2 gigantic colourful mandalas onto its signature white colonial architecture. The installation celebrates 60 years of diplomatic ties between Singapore and France.

If you are lucky enough to catch its 5 minute light shows, they feature distinctive design elements from local culture, including Kebaya and Batik motifs, reflecting the brilliant cultural heritage and the flow of these textiles across Southeast Asia. Each performance is followed by a 10-minute interval before the next showing.

MOSAIC runs nightly during the festival with the following schedule:

Sunday-Thursday: 7:30 PM - 11:00 PM

Friday-Saturday: 7:30 PM - 12:00 AM

About the artist(s):

Bellot, the creative mind behind MOSAIC, is a French architect and digital artist with an impressive portfolio of curatorship. His work has been awarded the Trophée des Lumières at the 2021 Fête des Lumières de Lyon.

Ena Eno who studied at the Conservatoire de Metz, composes and designs the acousmatic soundtrack for MOSAIC.He’s created sound installations in venues across France and has partnered with Bellot’s AV Extended on multimedia projects since 2014. Josselin Fouché rounds out the team as installation designer.

Jiwa Laut

Outside SMU’s Yong Pung How School of Law, Jiwa Laut features illuminated acrylic crabs, swaying gently to echo the ebb and flow of the tides. Their pincers are intentionally omitted, allowing them to move with a tidal rhythm.

Jiwa Laut represents the folklore from various coastal cultures that have shaped South-East Asia (SEA). In Malay tales, a giant crab climbs trees, raising and lowering the waters. The Philippines speaks of moon-eating crabs whose bites shift the tides of the seas. Even Singapore’s own pusat tasek legend locates a great crab at the ocean’s centre, linked here to Bras Basah’s history as a water basin.

Crabs in particular represent various virtues in SEA folklore, from them shedding their shells representing growth and renewal, to carcinisation (evolution’s tendency to turn animals crab-like) suggesting that the crab’s form is uniquely enduring. Across cultures, this archetype recurs: multi-armed deities like Guanyin and Shiva mirror the crab’s many limbs, the zodiac sign cancer carries its claws, and even Chinese teas curl like crab legs.

In bringing together these stories and symbols, Jiwa Laut explores how the maritime nature of Southeast Asia has shaped our civilisations, and how our civilisations in turn have perceived these conditions, retelling them as myths and embedding them in symbols in art.

About the artist(s):

Koh Kai Ting (b. 1996, Batu Pahat, Malaysia) is a Malaysia- and Singapore-based artist known for poetic visual narratives exploring personal happiness versus societal norms, drawing on theories by Spinoza and Freud. She has earned awards such as UOB Painting of the Year (2018, Malaysia) and NAFA Fine Art Award (Diploma, 2018, Singapore), plus multiple scholarships.

Skygazers: Dreaming into the Past and Future

We walked further down Armenian Street from the Jiwa Laut exhibit, then were greeted by a riot of colourful neon lights. The Peranakan Museum was lit up with rainbow lights. If you look closer, the installation features a face gazing skyward, inspired by an archival photograph of four nyonyas, adorned with distinctive Peranakan patterns and motifs. We mainly stayed for the rainbow vibes. This exhibit is a great photo-op–Skygazers transforms the Peranakan Museum into an interactive canvas, bridging traditional preservation with modern artistry to make cultural heritage engaging and accessible for today’s audiences.

About the artist(s):

Space Objekt x Reza Hasni’s collaborative work features immersive, large-scale installations and public art for festivals and events worldwide. Space Objekt, founded by Tina Fung and Ash Razaque, is a design studio dedicated to reimagining spatial experiences. Reza Hasni is an artist known for creating transcendental realities through illustration and motion graphics. Their past projects include commissions for the Malay Heritage Centre, Summerwell Festival (Bucharest, Romania), Life is Beautiful (Las Vegas, USA), and Singapore Art Week

KU A Dreamer

After our short break at Funan from the rain, we came across this exhibition at the entrance of the mall.

Amidst the constant rush of work, plans, and obligations, personal dreams often fade into the background. KU offers a gentle reminder to pause. Depicted at rest, the 3 metre tall figure of a wide-eyed boy sits in a reclining position and carefully tucks his dreams into a box, inviting us to slow down, release our anxieties, and notice the world around us. There is a button viewers can press at his box, which would emit a bell tone and for the lights on the wall behind it to light up to form different patterns.

Placed intentionally at the entrance of Funan Mall, right at the bustling crossroads of Singapore’s CBD, the artwork is a reminder of stillness amidst the rush of crowds and traffic. A reminder for viewers to slow down and reflect on their dreams.

About the artist(s):

Tùng Monkey, a seasoned visual artist and creative director, merges digital illustration, real-time graphics, and cutting-edge technologies including AR/VR, 3D printing, and AI to craft immersive experiences. His VJ work and multimedia installations have featured at international events across Southeast Asia and beyond.

Fortune Food Paradise

Food definitely comes to mind when one thinks of Bugis. Fortune Centre, a stone’s throw away from Bencoolen MRT, is known for the hubbub of food patrons in the day. At night, the Fortune Food Paradise exhibit breathes a second lease of life into the sleepy building.

Fortune Food Paradise is a short animated film created by Art and Design students from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) that features two parts. The first portion explores childhood memories associated with iconic local dishes and the experience of partaking in such fare with one’s loved ones. The second portion brings viewers forward into the future, where our iconic local cuisine evolves along with time into modern fusion creations. These rejuvenated food experiences continue the overall theme of food bringing loved ones together across time and space.

While both animated portions are rather short, the vibrant use of colours and adorable animation style convey a thousand words in a single instant! Do check out the Fortune centre billboard from now till 6 September for the wonderful Fortune Food Paradise!

About the artist(s):

The film was borne from a collaboration between the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) Faculty of Art & Design and Bras Basah.Bugis(BBB) Arts and Culture District.

Waterloo Street Stories

Near Fortune Centre, visitors enjoy a relaxing change in pace and sensory experience with the Waterloo Street Stories. Located at the nearby Stamford Arts Centre, #WaterlooStKakis invite visitors to engage with the sensory experience of the everyday reality of Waterloo Street.

The Waterloo Street Stories is a multidisciplinary project for Singapore Night Festival 2025, which celebrates the rich culture of Waterloo Street. Objectifs, the organisation in charge of producing this exhibit, is part of the five-member organising committee behind the Waterloo Street Stories, and has contributed to the research, curation and production that celebrates the history and people of Waterloo Street.

A Sun-Dried Time Capsule is an outdoor exhibit by emerging visual artist Angelena Ikah. Through imprinting, this series explores the imprint of time on form, space and human connection, a quiet tribute to the sun-dry shops of Waterloo Streets and the subtle forms that emerge when time, environment and attentiveness converge.

The Outdoor Photo Exhibition is also another wonderful complement to the experience of Waterloo Street. The simple display on wooden perches promises an immersive audible experience that transports visitors through Waterloo Street over time. As visitors walk down memory lane, the audioscape slowly transforms into something familiar. The sounds of wooden clogs, stirring cups, temple blocks and blessing bells, as well as the scale used in sundries becomes more reminiscent of Waterloo Street today. The audioscape has now transformed into a modern and cultural scene that complements the sites of worship and the many sundry stores along Waterloo street.

The Outdoor Photo Exhibition is best enjoyed with less crowds, allowing for visitors to truly appreciate and ponder the significance of the sounds created by the exhibits.

Do complement your visit to the Outdoor Photo Exhibition with other activities available in the Stamford Arts Centre, starting from 22 August!

About the artist(s):

Angelena Ikah is an emerging visual artist based in Indonesia and Singapore and the essence of her art lies in the observation of her surroundings.

Objectifs is a non-profit visual arts centre based in Singapore dedicated to photography and film. Objectifs is part of the five member organising committee behind the #WaterlooStreetStories.

Conclusion

The Singapore Night Festival 2025 runs from 22 August to 6 September 2025, showcasing over 80 art and light experiences across the Bras Basah·Bugis precinct. Stretching along a 3.2 km route, the festival transforms our city into a nocturnal wonderland. What we have covered is just a small fraction of the event–do jio your friends after class to partake in the vibes!