Sim’s performance, an hour-long monologue with multimedia and live sound will premiere at the Esplanade Singtel Waterfront Theatre in Singapore on August 30, 31 and September 1. She will perform herself and be accompanied by musician Cheryl Ong on stage. 

This new multimedia performance explores memory, inheritance and Sim’s family history against the setting of the “Malayan Emergency” (1948-1960).  

Part documentary and part a speculative look at how we might deal with the past, One Day We’ll Understand excavates hidden histories, Chinese diasporic experiences and the long legacies​ of colonialism. 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.  

Drawing on Sim’s large body of evocative photographic and filmic work, probing questions both personal and universal, One Day We’ll Understand transcends the autobiographical to a larger canvas that speaks to memory, loss, trauma, restitution and repair.  

Led by a Singaporean-Australian creative team, One Day We'll Understand combines haunting imagery with narration, archival footage, and a driving ​live score by percussionist Ong​, giving voice to Sim’s multiple personas as ​artist​, historian, writer, mother and granddaughter, opening up ways to think about our pasts and futures.    

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