SINGAPORE — Introducing AfterForms, the third pilot project supported by the National Arts Council under its Project Arts Metaverse (PAM) initiative – part of Our SG Arts Plan (2023–2027) and created with innovation counsel TBWA\Singapore. AfterForms: Metaverse amid Climate Grief & Memory launches four new immersive virtual environments, complemented by a hybrid exhibition featuring art installations.
Conceived as a digital arts incubator, the project examines how digital worlds inherit what physical ones erase. Rather than presenting the metaverse as escape or novelty, AfterForms positions it as a site of encounter and space of consequence, where loss and responsibility continue to accumulate virtually.
Moving between physical installations and virtual realms, visitors are invited to not only observe but also participate in the work. Form becomes unstable, memory accumulates, and every action leaves a trace. Presence, movement, and breath shape what unfolds, inviting participants to consider how digital environments can carry emotional residue, unresolved histories, and ecological grief forward.
Through four newly commissioned works, AfterForms explores how climate grief, displacement, and technological acceleration reshape our experience of space, responsibility, and what endures.
Land Erosion
by Han Sai Por
Cultural Medallion recipient Han Sai Por presents a hybrid work that pairs sculptural installations with a corresponding metaverse environment. Visitors first encounter material evidence of environmental loss before entering a virtual landscape shaped by erosion, where ecological collapse is experienced as spatial, embodied, and inescapable.
Drift Alley
by Debbie Ding
In Drift Alley, audiences navigate a fragmented digital environment inspired by the back lanes of Little India. Moving through glitching shophouses and informal spaces, they encounter characters and systems that reflect the precarious economies shaping both physical cities and future digital worlds.
The Wound is Bigger than Your Handyplast
by Spang & Lei
This work transforms climate grief into an active condition. Visitors enter a virtual rainforest that responds to their breath and movement. The environment does not heal; instead, each interaction accumulates damage and memory, implicating every participant in the wound.
Memory Factory
by LiteWerkz
Memory Factory presents memory as a navigable digital structure. Visitors move through architectural fragments formed by migration, misremembered homes, and speculative artefacts, revealing memory as mutable, constructed, and continuously reshaped through participation.
Along with the four virtual worlds, AfterForms also features an exhibition, an artists’ talk, workshops, and a digital art toolkit to enable artists with no coding experience to build their own virtual worlds. Learn more about AfterForms at afterforms.io.
Victor Ang, Director, Technology and Innovation, National Arts Council commented “Project Arts Metaverse reflects NAC’s commitment to support new modes of artistic creation in the virtual space while building the sector’s digital capabilities. We empower artists to experiment with technology and explore ideas through the virtual worlds they are developing. AfterForms demonstrates how digital environments can become sites of memory and cultural reflection that engage new audiences.”
Spang & Lei, Producers and Curators of AfterForms added “Technology promises reinvention, but it cannot erase consequence. The metaverse exposes what we have already neglected. AfterForms approaches it as a living archive of unresolved histories, emotional residue, and ecological memory. Every action becomes trace. Every choice persists. The future is not elsewhere. It is already sedimenting in the worlds we build.”
Exhibition Dates:
Thursday, 22 January 2026 – Saturday, 31 January 2026
Venue: Blue Room, The Arts House, Singapore
Time: 12pm – 8pm daily
AfterForms Artists’ Talk: Worlds That Refuse to Disappear
Sunday, 25 January 2026
Blue Room, The Arts House, Singapore
3.00pm – 4.30pm
By registration only (Eventbrite)
CREDITS
Project Owner: Spang & Lei, Producers and Curators of AfterForms
Project Manager and Innovation Counsel: TBWA\Singapore
