Lighting the Way
ALIGHT Conference illuminates regional connections at Singapore Night Festival 2025.
By Art+ Magazine Team
Photo courtesy of HeritageSG
August 22, 2025
Jiwa Laut by Aw Boon Xin & Koh Kai Ting
As Southeast Asia’s artistic community continues to shine on the global stage, the 2025 edition of the Singapore Night Festival (SNF) highlights a new initiative that celebrates light-based art and projection mapping from across the region. The ALIGHT (A Southeast Asian Light Network) Conference is a pioneering platform that brings together leading artists, designers, and cultural organizers to explore the transformative power of light and projection.
Curated as part of SNF 2025—which is presented for the first time by HeritageSG, a subsidiary of the National Heritage Board—the ALIGHT Conference underscores Singapore’s growing role as a hub for regional artistic exchange.
“At its heart, the ALIGHT Conference reflects a long-term commitment to cultivating a regional network for light and projection art, one rooted in shared contexts, shaped by Southeast Asian perspectives, and strengthened through collaboration and exchange,” says Qazim Karim, Festival Director of Singapore Night Festival 2025.
Sky Castle by ENESS
The inaugural conference on August 21 offered a full day of keynotes, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, and networking sessions, bringing together creatives from across the region to share their insights, methods, and challenges. Topics included sustainable approaches to light art, the integration of emerging technologies, and the influence of ecological and cultural contexts on artistic production. There were also sessions examining how regional festivals are curated and produced.
Among those leading the conversation is Abdul Shakir, multi-disciplinary artist and co-founder of the ALIGHT Conference. His work fuses projection mapping, interactive media, and installation art, and he also mentors young visual artists through SNF’s Projection Mapping Masterclass. The lineup of speakers also included Isaiah Cacnio, a Manila-based digital and fine artist known for using digital animated artworks that use projection mapping to transform physical space into immersive environments.
MOSAIC by Jérémie Bellot
“Across Southeast Asia, artists are increasingly using light and projection mapping practices as a way to tell stories, create experiential experiences, and connect people. What’s especially compelling is how these practices are rooted in place, shaped by lived experiences, cultural traditions, local histories, and so much more,” Karim shares.
That ethos is vividly captured in Jiwa Laut, an installation by Kai Ting and Boon, co-founders of art-tech collective 2point013. Inspired by Southeast Asian crab folklore, their glowing crab sculptures reconnect urban audiences with marine memory.
For the SNF 2025 program, themed Island Nights, over 80 immersive and innovative experiences reimagines Singapore’s spaces with creative storytelling drawn from its island heritage and multicultural identity.
Awakening by Tororo.aoi
A highlight includes Waves of Time: Splash On Our Skyline, a retro-futuristic neon installation by Maegzter (Megan Foo)—Singapore’s first neon artist—paying homage to the city’s maritime past. Other highlights include Sky Castle by Australia’s ENESS and Kampong Chill by artist duo Yok & Sheryo. At the National Museum of Singapore, French artist Jérémie Bellot presents MOSAIC, a tribute to island exploration, featuring kebaya and batik motifs. At CHIJMES, audiences will witness the first projection mapping works of four female artists—Adeline Kueh, HAFI, KangLi, and Tororo.aoi—who graduated from the Projection Mapping Masterclass.
For Karim, “Light is one of the most primal forms of storytelling; it creates atmosphere, evokes emotion, and draws us into a different temporality. In many Southeast Asian cultures, light has always played a role in various cultural and social contexts. What projection mapping adds is the ability to layer, to transform, to reimagine physical space in real time, and that opens up immense potential for narrative and effect.”
He adds: “Across Southeast Asia, there’s been a noticeable shift away from grand visual spectacles toward works that respond thoughtfully to their specific environments.” Aside from this, a growing emphasis on sustainability and interactive works are shaping the next wave of light art across the region.
The Singapore Night Festival runs from August 22 to September 6, 2025 at Bras Basah.Bugis.
