Artists
Kok Heng Leun
Heng Leun is a prominent figure in the Singapore arts scene, having built his career as a theatre director, playwright, dramaturg and educator. As artist and founder of Drama Box, he is known for engaging the community through the arts and champions civic discourse across different segments of society. He was the Artistic Director for Both Sides, Now from 2013-2022. For his invaluable contributions, Heng Leun has been recognised with the Young Artist Award (2000), Cultural Fellowship (2014), and Singapore’s highest arts accolade, the Cultural Medallion (2022). He also represented the arts sector as a Nominated Member of Parliament (2016–2018).
Jasmine Ng Kin Kia
Jasmine is a filmmaker who tells stories across platforms — from film-TV to theatre, site-specific installations and audioscapes. Her past works include Eating Air, Shirkers, Afterlife, and KING. She is the co-creator of SAGA, Singapore’s award-winning first long-form narrative podcast about the mysterious takeover of AWARE.
She has also created film installations for multi-disciplinary projects like PRISM for NUS-LKYSPP’s Institute of Policy Studies, to explore future scenario planning for policymaking, in addition to immersive arts experiences like Both Sides, Now.
An advocate for the film + arts community and the creative industries, she is also one of the co-founders and current president of the Singapore Association of Motion Picture Professionals.
Adib Kosnan
Adib is a theatre practitioner, and currently an Associate Artist with Checkpoint Theatre. He acts, writes and directs, and has worked with companies like Teater Kami, Teater Ekamatra, TheatreWorks, The Necessary Stage, Drama Box and Buds Theatre, among others.He was recently awarded Best Supporting Actor at the Life Theatre Awards 2020 for his role in Angkat by Nabilah Said and Noor Effendy Ibrahim. In 2018, his script 28.8 by Teater Kami was nominated for Best Original script.
Adib was the co-lead artist for Both Sides, Now: Mengukir Harapan. The experience of engaging the Malay-Muslim community in having conversations about end-of-life issues has cemented his interest and passion in using theatre as a tool for creating awareness and enhancing communication.
Han Xuemei
Xuemei is a theatre director, facilitator, educator, designer and Co-Artistic Director of Drama Box.
She believes that theatre can inspire growth and create different forms of artistic experiences that engage with audiences from all walks of life. Her works seek to deepen reflection and dialogue about pertinent issues so that we can grow our individual and collective capacity to contribute to a better society. For Both Sides, Now, she worked with a group of residents from Chong Pang in 2018.
Xuemei continues to study and explore arts-based community engagement. She is specifically interested in the possibilities of theatre in youth engagement and education. In recognition of her artistic endeavour and development, she received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council of Singapore in 2021.
Alecia Neo
Alecia 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 works have been exhibited at various museums and festivals both locally and internationally. She worked with residents from Chong Pang and Telok Blangah from 2018-19 for Both Sides, Now. She is currently working on Care Index, an ongoing research focused on the indexing and transmission of embodied gestures and movements which emerge from lived experiences of care labour. Care Index has been recently presented at The Esplanade: Theatres by the Bay, The Listening Biennial, Assembly for Permacircular Museums (ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe), New Season of Care (Asia-Art-Activism) and Presence of Mind (Gallery Lane Cove, NSW, Australia).
Alecia is also co-founder of Brack, an art collective and platform for socially engaged art and Ubah Rumah Residency on Nikoi Island, which focuses on ecological practices. Active since 2014, her ongoing collaborations with disabled artists currently manifest as an arts platform, Unseen Art Initiatives.
anGie Seah
anGie is a Singaporean artist whose multidisciplinary practice traverses the mediums of drawing, sculpture, performance art, sound and video to respond to the enigma of life. Since 1997, she has exhibited works, taken part in artist residencies and participated in performance art festivals both locally and internationally. anGie has also been active in initiating art projects and participatory workshops within communities both at home and overseas, conducting participatory workshops for diverse groups of people, including families, underprivileged children, youth at risk, children and seniors with special needs, persons with mental disorders and seniors with dementia or who have suffered a stroke. She worked with seniors in Telok Blangah for Both Sides, Now in 2019.
Moli Mohter
Moli is a theatre practitioner with extensive experience as an actor, educator, facilitator, writer and director. She has written and directed memorable works such as Sembelit Lagi in 2012, Penantian in 2013 and Kemas in 2023. As an actor-facilitator, she was part of the forum theatre play, Trick or Threat by Drama Box that toured to the World Forum Theatre Festival in Austria in 2009. Moli was one of the lead artists for Both Sides, Now: Mengukir Harapan. She also directed and wrote an interactive play, Waktu. Moli is currently the Resident Artist of Teater Kami. She hopes that she will continue to tell honest and genuine stories that touch the hearts and minds of those who witness her work.
Shirley Soh
My art practice began with ceramics, a very tactile, craft-based medium, but I soon found its very grounding (earth, the elements, physicality, cycles) expanded my interests into agriculture, food, the environment, and ultimately, sustainability. But looking around and outwards didn’t make sense without a concomitant looking inwards. Investigating sustainable development became meaningless without thinking about the sustainable personal. And what could be more personal than thinking about the end of life: ageing, sickness, and death itself. That’s why I love my involvement in the Both Sides, Now project, because thinking about dying makes us think about living. Sustainably and well.
Dahlia Osman
Dahlia is a multidisciplinary artist who examines neuroplasticity, her personal narrative and its wider connection to the human condition. She has been commissioned to create public sculptures, as well as large charcoal drawings and murals for local museums and private residences. She has also collaborated with theatre companies on set design and fabrication for numerous productions. In 2022, she led a group of community art-makers to create works for of life and legacy, an exhibition for Both Sides Now, as part of Lepaskan Sesalan. Her extensive work experiences include Japan, Jakarta, Brunei, Australia, New York (Tyler Graphics) and London (Antony Gormley Studio). Dahlia is a versatile art educator with 30 years of experience teaching various disciplines at various institutions, including LASALLE College of the Arts, United World College S.E.A. and Central Saint Martins, London.
Hasyimah Harith
Hasyimah is a Malay-Muslim female artist who performs, choreographs and teaches Malay folk dance. Using her body as the starting point, Hasyimah works with the Malay traditions and eroticism, as a way to reclaim agency over her body. Her working methods involve strategies of boosting libido such as fantasy and intimacy. Her works hope to confront and overcome the conditioned shame and grief that is often attached to female eroticism.
Hasyimah is the co-founder, artist and company manager of P7:1SMA (Prisma), a dance performance company that hopes to radically shift the perspective of Malay dance through intimate and innovative performance experiences. P7:1SMA worked with seniors from Montfort Care for Lepaskan Sesalan, as part of Both Sides, Now.
Norhaizad Adam
Norhaizad is a dance artist from Singapore. He performs and choreographs for unconventional community spaces, galleries and theatres. Central to his Malay dance practice is considering the performativity of everyday gestures and accessing tradition as a form of toolkit for living in global modernity or for the imagined future. His works talk about labour, morality and behaviourism in Malay culture. Norhaizad is co-founder and the Artistic Director of P7:1SMA (Prisma), a dance performance company that hopes to radically shift the perspective of Malay dance through intimate and innovative performance experiences. P7:1SMA worked with seniors from Montfort Care for Lepaskan Sesalan, as part of Both Sides, Now. Currently, he is also an associate artist of Dance Nucleus. In 2021, he received the National Art Council’s Young Artist Award.
Salty Xi Jie Ng
Salty is an artist and educator working intimately with people and their lives within a transdisciplinary, collaborative practice concerned with ancestry, interdimensional/interbeing relationing, eroticism, death, and ageing, in hopes of uncovering hidden selves and histories in kinship with the other-than-human. The lead artist for Both Sides, Now 2023-24, she has developed socially engaged work across cultures and contexts, including The Grandma Reporter (2016-present), The Inside Show (2019), Buangkok Mall Life Club (2020), and Not Grey: Intimacy, Ageing, and Being (2021). She has an MFA in art and social practice from Portland State University.
