Voilah! French festival focuses on the visual arts for maximum impact in a divided world

SINGAPORE – Singapore artists’ takes on France and, conversely, French artists’ impressions of the city-state, will occupy centre stage at the Voilah! France Singapore Festival 2025, which returns from April 23 to June 8.

Continuing the previous edition’s focus on arts and culture, Voilah! 2025 has a heavy emphasis on the visual arts. This includes major

National Gallery Singapore survey City Of Others: Asian Artists In Paris, 1920s-1940s

and a photography exhibition by Singaporean Melisa Teo along Anderson Bridge.

Titled Two Rivers, Teo’s show – sited in a public avenue with heavy footfall – is a visual dialogue of Paris’ Seine river and the Singapore River – dual water bodies that have shaped the artist. The graduate of the National University of Singapore and the Sorbonne University in Paris says photographing the Seine, which always appears new with the seasons, prompted her to also direct her lens at the Singapore River. “It struck me that I had never photographed my own country. What about my own river? I live right next to it.”

Another intercultural show, City SingaPOP, will be at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, featuring more than 70 works by Singapore-based French graphic designer and photographer Nicolas Damiens.

He brings his advertising sensibility into editing and composing his photos, to create pop reimaginations of Singapore’s iconic monuments and shophouses. This is the second time the centre is working with the organiser, the Embassy of France in Singapore, on the festival.

The embassy’s counsellor for culture, education and science Emilienne Baneth-Nouailhetas said at the Voilah! launch that the embassy chose the visual arts because exhibitions have a deeper and longer-lasting impact than more ephemeral events such as theatre performances and film screenings.

Some 50,000 people, including Singapore citizens, permanent residents and expatriates, attended the French embassy’s events in 2024.

The 2025 edition is also meant to celebrate 60 years of France-Singapore relations, and it is anticipated that French President Emmanuel Macron, who will be in Singapore in May, will drop by Voilah!.

Gallery and workshop STPI will show Cuban artist Wifredo Lam’s print works. The surrealist painter befriended Spanish painter Pablo Picasso in France just before World War II and settled in Paris after 1952. Lam is receiving his first retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in November.

Ms Baneth-Nouailhetas joked that Lam, like the many legendary artists attracted to Paris as an artistic hub in the early 20th century, was an honorary French citizen. “We are very inclusive,” she said.

Theatre fans need not fret, for there is the customary collaboration with French-focused performing arts company Sing’theatre, which is putting on a tribute to celebrated French songwriters and performers, including Charles Aznavour and Serge Gainsbourg.

The revue, A French Kiss In Singapore, stars beloved home-grown theatre veterans such as Hossan Leong, Andrew Marko and Dwayne Lau.

Transposing a Spanish story to “Singapore’s golden era”, the Singapore Lyric Opera is staging a reimagined Carmen, by French composer Georges Bizet, at the Victoria Theatre on April 25 and 26, in celebration of the company’s 35th anniversary.

Meanwhile, Singapore companies The Opera People and Red Dot Baroque team up with French ensemble Les Epopees and music director Stephane Fuget to enact Medee, that age-old tragedy of feminine rage, adapted from the 1693 opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

The festival also has a special collaboration with Gardens by the Bay, whose Supertrees have been embedded in Voilah! 2025’s key visual art.

A free, timed programme at the gardens, titled Les Arts In Nature, sees French Baroque music ensemble Les Epopees play songs from its repertoire. There is also a film screening of Autumn And The Black Jaguar (2024), a family adventure in the Amazon by French film-maker Gilles de Maistre.

Freshly minted French ambassador to Singapore Stephen Marchisio said cultural exchange is increasingly vital in a divided world.

“France and Singapore have always shared a mutual appreciation for culture and innovation, and an understanding that we are better together,” he said. “These values are central to Voilah!.”

For more information on Voilah!, go to

Voilah.sg