One Day We’ll Understand takes photographer Sim Chi Yin’s family history as a point of departure and explores a largely hidden chapter of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, in what is today Malaysia and Singapore.

In this performative reading, Nobel Peace Prize photographer for 2017 Chi Yin uncovers the unspoken story of her paternal grandfather, a leftist deported to China during the Malayan Emergency, and who was later executed by the anti-Communist Kuomintang soldiers. As she digs through oral histories and personal archives of a generation of anti-colonial activists, more questions emerge. In this reading, she asks: Whose past is it? Whose truth? Whose fragile memories?  

The reading will be followed by a conversation between Chi Yin and curators Jason Wee (24 May) and Sam I-Shan (25 May) on her on-going work to archive these counter-narratives of the region.