Walk The Talk

Pioneer performance artist Amanda Heng revisits her acclaimed work, Let’s Walk, which is also the theme of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2018

- Amanda Heng

THE LATE 1980S MARKED THE BEGINNING OF THE contemporary art epoch in the Singapore art history. At the forefront of this movement was Amanda Heng, one of the founding members of the Singapore art collective, The Artists Village, which was founded by eminent contemporary artist Tang Da Wu in 1988. Singapore’s first “artist colony” brought together like-minded artists to explore progressive new ways and ideologies in making art in response to societal changes.

The signature works of such iconic Singaporean artists will be at the centre of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, which takes a new direction this year. Held from January 17 to 28, the 14th edition of the festival sees 16 local and international works themed around Let’s Walk, the title of a series of walking performances first created by Heng in 1999 in response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis when female employees were the first to get retrenched. Let’s Walk explores the lack of progress for women in society, and curiously, the beauty industry boom which saw women enhancing their looks in order to keep their jobs.