Singapore International Festival of Arts 2024: Sun & Sea

"I can’t stop thinking about this work" – Adrian Searle, The Guardian
"Surreal as it is profound" – Kelly Grovier, BBC
"Subtly unnerving" – Artnet

Sun & Sea takes place on an artificial beach crafted through light, architecture and music. Vacationers in colourful bathing suits are lying next to each other on sandy ground, while the audience observes them from above, as though from the point of view of the sun.

In the heat of a summer day, characters begin telling their stories. Frivolous micro-stories slowly give rise to broader, more serious subjects and grow into a global symphony, a universal human choir addressing planetary-scale climate breakdown. In the work, the physical finitude and fatigue of the human body becomes a stand-in for an exhausted Earth.

The setting, a crowded beach, instinctively evokes laziness and a breezy holiday mood. In this context, the message follows suit: serious topics unfold easily, softly-like a pop song on the very last day on Earth.

An ecological work at its very core, Sun & Sea is concerned with the way in which we-our human species consistently fails to recognise those planetary-scale threats and urgencies we ourselves are the cumulative cause of.

Supported by Embassy of Lithuania in Singapore.