The Light to Night Festival has always been a key event during Singapore Art Week and this year’s edition looks to expand further from its usual jam-packed list of offerings.

Aside from the popular light projections on key buildings in the Civic District precinct (such as the National Gallery Singapore and its neighbours), there are several festival firsts, including Visions, a cutting-edge interactive outdoor augmented reality (AR) art exhibition done in collaboration with the globally renowned AR art production studio Acute Art. Audiences will be able to unlock custom AR artworks by the likes of  Cao Fei, Olafur Eliasson, Kaws, as well as Singapore artist Ho Tzu Nguyen, with the Civic District as their backdrop.

Other highlights include Move For?ward (Unseen: Inside Out), a multi-sensory art installation (pictured above) staged in the basement of National Gallery Singapore that truly walks the walk on spotlighting diverse creative voices. The installation is the result of a communal effort by 12 individuals from the visually impaired community and it invites audiences to participate in an audio walk of the installation as they navigate through a web of strings.

Check out the full line-up of activities here.

January 14 to February 3 at various locations

Another anchor event of Singapore Art Week is the S.E.A Focus fair – probably one of the best places to see Major Names in contemporary art.  This year’s edition features over 150 artworks from 50 artists and 24 galleries from the region, as well as several new initiatives.

The art fair is introducing a new fringe film programme that complements the main affair – it takes place at Projector X (The Projector’s new pop-up screening space at Riverside Point) and 25 compelling Southeast Asian artist-made short films, animations and video works will be screened there.

S.E.A. Focus will also be debuting its showcase of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), titled Tezos NFTs: The New North Star. The primary blockchain used in this showcase is Tezos, an energy-efficient blockchain widely adopted by NFT artists and collectors worldwide.

This showcase will feature 15 digital artists from the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, India, Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea who have minted their art on the Tezos blockchain. Excitingly, there will also be a live minting show, which will allow viewers and visitors to experience first-hand the process of minting an NFT. So if you’re curious about NFTs, this is the place to head down to. More details here.

January 15 to January 23 at #01-05 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Rd

Like most people, we’re frankly overwhelmed by the glut of events, activations, workshops, talks and exhibitions – more than 130 of them – crammed into the next two weeks during Singapore Art Week.

However, if you only have one day to check things out, we’d say Singapore Art Museum (SAM)’s new home at Tanjong Pagar Distripark is a great option. We shared a preview of what the space would look like last month – now the doors are finally open to the public from tomorrow. Spanning two floors, soaring six metres high ceilings and occupying a space of more than 32,000 sq ft, the Tanjong Pagar Distripark space makes for an impressive experience.

The opening exhibitions by various Singapore and regional artists on the ground-floor galleries are quite the sight, including the must-see multimedia show Refus by electronic art-rock band The Observatory (pictured) that converts “bio rhythms” from live mushrooms into sound. There’s also a pop-up coffee bookshop operated by Epigram Bookshop and Balestier Market Collective on-site, should you need to take a break.

After you’re done exploring the ground floor, head up to Level 3 to check out the interactive works created by emerging artists Chu Hao Pei, Salty Xi Jie Ng, and Johann Yamin during their residencies with SAM.

Opens January 14 at #01-02 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Rd