Thursday 27 February – Saturday 1 March 2025

One Day We’ll Understand is a new multimedia performance exploring memory and inheritance through the compelling family history of visual artist Sim 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.

The work is directed by Chamber Made Artistic Director Tamara Saulwick with dramaturgy by Kok Heng Leun, video art by Nick Roux and lighting design by Andy Lim.

★★★★★  ‘One Day We’ll Understand was a flawless, tightly executed show. What began as an autobiographical journey of self-discovery left us with a glimpse into the haunting impact of colonial trauma.’ ARTS HUB

‘The choreography, so to speak, of movement, speech, images, and of its structured revelations is breathtaking and beautiful in its sadness.  And it is a high artistic achievement, a ‘mixed media’ presentation of a largely forgotten history in which Australia is implicated.  It deserves to be widely seen. It will fit many venues, and it will be a revelation wherever it is shown.’ STAGE WHISPERS

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.