6 Highlights of the Light to Night Festival 2023 (6-26 January 2023)

The Light to Night Festival is back from 6-26 January 2023 in the Civic District. Get your cameras ready for over 60 stunning immersive and multi-sensory experiences, the iconic Art Skins on Monuments and live performances!

The Light to Night Festival, organised by National Gallery Singapore in collaboration with its Civic District partners, is back! The theme for the Light to Night Festival 2023 is “Here and Now”, and explores what it means to be in the present. Highlights of the Light to Night Festival 2023 include the iconic Art Skins on Monuments (the biggest facade light show in Singapore), live performances, large-scale day-to-night art installations. The Art X Social festival market also returns with over 50 booths of arts and crafts, food and beverage, workshops and more!

Admission to the Light to Night Festival 2023 is free, and there are programmes on from as early as 10am until midnight.

6 Highlights at the Light to Night Festival 2023

So what are the highlights this year at the Light to Night Festival 2023?

1. Art Skins on Monuments: Light to Night Festival 2023

One of our all-time favourites at the Light to Night Festival 2023 – the Art Skins on Monuments is the biggest facade light show in Singapore! Look out for spectacular light projections created by various artists on the façade of cultural institutions around the Civic District, including the National Gallery Singapore, Asian Civilisations Museum, The Arts House and Victoria Theatre & Victoria Concert Hall. This year’s Art Skins on Monuments will premiere commissions by international and local artists, including Botanica by Davy and Kristin McGuire from the United Kingdom, which features illuminating light projections beyond the Gallery’s Rotunda Library & Archive dome, and on to the library’s table tops to bring the magical experience closer to visitors.

When: daily, 7:30pm to midnight 
Where: Buildings in the Civic District: National Gallery Singapore, Asian Civilisations Museum, The Arts House and Victoria Theatre & Victoria Concert Hall.

The Light to Night Festival 2023 sees two main new installations at the Padang one interactive and the other immersive:

2. Ephemeral: immersive light & sound installation

Ephemeral by Atelier Sisu is an immersive light and sound installation that aims to capture the concept of ephemerality in the visual form of bubbles.
Where: Padang

3. Hearing Padang: an interactive installation

Hearing Padang by Sai takes inspiration from the former Supreme Court in the Civic District where disputes are resolved between people through hearings, this art installation made of two curved structures creates an acoustic experience by allowing sound to travel from one end to another.
Where: Padang

4. There Is A Window In My Eye If You Look In You Will See The Sky

With a visual mechanic that recreates the circadian rhythm of dawn to dusk, Dawn Ng’s resplendent artwork prompts reflection as visitors are confronted by a large visual representation of the invisible passage of time.
Where: Gallery’s Padang Atrium

5. Other art installations at Light to Night Festival 2023

Glimpse, self-guided accessible multi-disciplinary installation

Explore the self-guided installation ‘Glimpse’ with four performers with disability. The installation and performance are structured around concepts of presence and absence, and will spotlight and expand on themes of self-care, disabled visibility, and the aesthetics of care.

Dwelling by Vince Ong Choon Hoe (VOCH)

This art installation explores an archetype of a house and what a home truly represents. The work was inspired by the idea of how architects consider one definition of ‘dwelling’ as a home with a hearth at its core.
Where: at the front lawn of The Arts House.

Pulse by Felix Frank

Pulse is a motion piece that is at once exciting and calm – made-up of black and white elements that flow into each other. This art work mesmerizes through the pure beauty of light and sound sequences. The soundtrack to this light projection is pitched at 432-HZ a frequency that is said to resonate with the patterns of the universe.
Where: Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall

STARDUST by Muhammad Izdi

Go on a journey through a speculative otherworldly narrative which depicts a reality where natural elements intertwine with surreal ones.
Where: Funan’s Underground Pedestrian Link

Look to the Heavens by Cake Theatrical Productions

Discover a multi-sensorial art installation, Look to the Heavens by Cake Theatrical Productions, and be surrounded by sights and sounds that will encourage them to embrace the present.
Where: Asian Civilisations Museum Green.

6. Art X Social: over 50 Booths and Live Performances

Art X Social returns with a fresh line-up of over 50 food and beverage stalls, new craft and art brands, exciting live performances with artists like Aisyah Aziz, Lalit Kumar, Anise x Sonia Kwek and many more plus outdoor workshops!
Where: St Andrew’s Road and Empress Lawn.

There will also be a Kolektif Trivia Night with a range of general knowledge questions from pop culture fun facts to scientific questions from your primary school textbooks, Artsplaining lively dialogues with Gallery curators and Funny Fridays – a free-for-all live-comedy series featuring local stand-up comedians, such as Patricia Mok and Siraj Aziz.

Good to know: National Gallery Singapore will be offering free entry to all visitors on Fridays to Sundays during the festival period and extend its opening hours to 11pm on the same days.

All the deets: Light to Night Festival 2023

When: 6-26 January 2023
Where: Civic District
How much: Free to enter (some programmes may have extra charges).

The full line-up of Light to Night Festival 2023 programmes can be viewed at lighttonight.sg