‘Performing Care’ at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay
By Alecia Neo, with Nabila Giovanna W

‘A Day in the Life’ is a series by A&M where we invite artists to share a day in their life through images accompanied by brief descriptions.

Alecia Neo (b. 1986) is a Singapore artist whose works illuminate human-centric issues such as caregiving, womanhood, coming-of-age and social inequalities through installations, photography and participatory workshops. From a young age, she was made aware of the stress of caregiving in her family, and the experience has formed the basis of her practice.

Community participation is also central to her practice. This led her to co-found Brack, a collective of artists who shed light on social issues. Other initiatives include Ubah Rumah Residency, an art residency programme that focuses on hospitality and ecology and Unseen Art Initiatives, a platform for emerging and professional disabled artists. Alecia recently staged her work ‘Performing Care’ (2023) at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay as part of its Visual Arts 2023 programme.

Let’s hear from Alecia about a day in her life as she prepared for ‘Performing Care’ (2023).

Video still from ‘Performing Care’, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

‘Performing Care’ is an iteration of the ‘Care Index’, an artistic research project I began incubating during the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Care Index’ gathers and enacts diverse care practices, and it is performed through everyday gestures and rituals by people from all walks of life.

Installation view of ‘Performing Care’, 2023. Image courtesy of Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.

For this exhibition at Esplanade Tunnel, the videos form a three-part visual poem, contemplating how care practices sculpt the carer's own vulnerable body, the pervasiveness of self-care industries, and how bodies could resist the pressures of bureaucratic or capitalistic systems. The choreographies emerged from melding the performers’ personal expressions of care with gestures contributed by the public via an open call process for the ‘Care Index’.

As part of the installation, there are two sets of photographic prints that features movement scores. They follow the journey of red line graphs flowing across a terrain of human skins. The red line graphs are derived from real-life data on topics related to the provision of care. I was first drawn to these line graphs when I was researching refugee numbers and the conditions of their movements across different geographies during a digital residency with In Transit Space.

Behind the scenes of ‘Performing Care’, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

Here, I am rehearsing the choreography in the studio with my collaborators Caroline Chin, Kyongsu Kathy Han and Weiying Tan, who are all trained in theatre and dance. I particularly valued their intercultural training, which immersed them in different Asian traditional performing art forms.

The central choreography on vulnerable bodies drew from numerous public submissions about living with grief, loss, chronic pain, caring for the dead, kinship, childhood memories, mutual aid movements, displaced and marginalised communities, negotiating boundaries and the weight of giving and receiving care.

For this project, I worked closely with Director of Photography Johnathan Goh and Sound Designer Tingli Lim, whose sound work introduced new layers to the movements. The third choreography on bureaucratic bodies drew from public submissions about digital technologies, isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and public protests. We were interested in how bodies could potentially resist the numbing pressures of bureaucratic or capitalistic systems.

Follow Alecia Neo on Instagram here.

Read other ‘A Day in the Life’ stories here.

About the Artist

Alecia Neo is an artist and cultural worker. Her collaborative practice unfolds primarily through installations, lens-based media and participatory workshops that examine modes of radical hospitality and care. Her recent projects include ‘Performing Care’ (2023), Esplanade Tunnel, ‘Between Earth and Sky’ (2023), 7th Anyang Public Art Project, ‘Scores for Caregiving’ (2023), ArtScience Museum, ‘Power to the People’ (2022), Karachi Biennial 2022 and ‘ramah-tamah’ (2020), Asian Civilisations Museum. Iterations of her ongoing project ‘Care Index’ have been presented at exhibitions, including The Listening Biennial 2021 and Assembly for Permacircular Museums, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany in 2021