vOilah! France Singapore Festival 2024 (vOilah!) is back for its 15th installation this month (it runs until 26 May). Organised by the Embassy of France in Singapore, with an impressive list of over 50 international and local partners to its name, the annual festival celebrates French art and culture on our shores through an encompassing programme line-up that spans performance and visual arts to science, lifestyle and—every Singaporean’s favourite topic—gastronomy.
With the Paris 2024 Olympics kicking off on 26 July, this year’s vOilah! also includes a special focus on sports: French champion skateboarder Max Berguin, Champion of the France Street Skateboard 2023, will be making his way to Singapore for a special performance that shows just why he is considered one of the best.
French Ambassador to Singapore, Her Excellency Minh-di Tang, speaks to us on the highlights and cannot-miss acts to catch.
Good afternoon, your Excellency. Can you tell us more about this year’s vOilah! festival?
What is different about this year's vOilah! Festival is that we’ve separated the vOilah! Film Festival [which happens in November] and the Spring Festival, as we want to have a footprint at two different moments of the year, and not focus everything within one month. This also allows us to take advantage of some of Singapore's festivals, like SIFA [Singapore International Festival of Arts; returning from 17 May to June 2], and to collaborate with Singaporean companies. So, as you know, vOilah! is all about diversity, and we have everything in the festival: Music, visual arts, shows and discussions on many different topics.
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What are some of the highlights you’d personally recommend?
As France is organising the Olympic Games this spring, we wanted to especially focus on that by organizing a two-day event called “Artletics”. It will take place right behind Orchard at Somerset Skate Park. It's free, open to the public and it’s a very family-friendly event. There will be two kinds of activities there: One will involve street art with Singaporean and French artists working together on murals. Then, we have an urban sports showcase where a French World Champion skateboarder [Max Berguin] will come down to Singapore for a demonstration, along with parkour and three buskers. Another highlight sees us going back to classics, one of which classics is Moby Dick, which also opens SIFA. It's a new, cutting-edge show that will use puppetry and projection. Another classic is Tartuffe: The Imposter by W!ld Rice. We have been very happy working with W!ld Rice and I love how they were able to take this very French, 300-year-old theatre work and modernise it and adapt it for the Singaporean audience—it’s very much a collaboration between French and Singaporean arts, which I really do think is very successful. Last but not least is the exhibition that we will have on the author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He was an aviator who had a very fascinating life, and we’re bringing in artefacts that belong to him personally.
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Resources aside, if you could personally organise a programme from vOilah!, what would it be?
I would love to organise something I saw at Lake Geneva in Switzerland; an outdoor photography exhibition in different parts of the city. The photos were giant, and we had to hunt them down all over the city. If we had the means of doing that [here], it would be wonderful because we would have French art all over Singapore. And we would and people who are keen on visiting this exhibition going to places like Tampines, or Toa Payoh, and other heartlands of Singapore. I would also love to have a giant cooking class maybe in the Botanic Gardens. We would have a three-star Michelin chef doing a masterclass outdoors. I'm sure that Singaporeans would love it. From a logistical point of view, it is going to be very difficult [to organise], but the French and Singaporeans both love food. Maybe we could cook frogs’ legs because Singaporeans and the French are maybe the only people in the world who eat them. So that will be lovely to share recipes.
For more information, visit voilah.sg.