Sonia Kwek is a performer and artist from Singapore whose practice focuses on performance, movement and the body as material. She often adopts an inter/trans-disciplinary approach to making, informed by her background in theatre and Butoh, to centre the expression and experience of the personal, unseen, intimate, visceral and erotic. Her works explore corporeal sensualities, the potency of kinesics and latent tensions within archetypes and metaphors, dealing with questions about embodiment, gender, perception and representation. Sonia creates and collaborates in projects which traverse spaces and mediums, including stage productions, museum/gallery activations, durational site-specific responses, experimental short films, nightlife gigs, immersive installations, participatory experiments, etc.

Prior to her studies at ITI, Sonia graduated with a Bachelor of Creative Industries with Distinction from Queensland University of Technology (Australia).  Currently, she is an associate artist with dance performance company P7:1SMA, a coordinator-member of experimental arts group Emergency Stairs’ Emergency Academy and creative producer of the Singapore edition of Club Chrome, a pole dance/creative collective platforming queer/SW/BIPOC pole dancers. Sonia is an experienced drama educator and facilitator for varying arts programs/workshops. She also works regularly as a life model for various educational institutions and artist circles.

Recent Achievements:

Works:

• Movement Artist/ Co-Creator, *?!%$&*#@$^*()}!@#|%>? (dance film): selected for screening at Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2023 (UK), Objectifs Women in Film and Photography 2023, Bridge Chicago Film & Video Festival 2023 (US), enCore: Dance on Film 2023 (US), West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival 2023 (US) where it won for 'Best Indeterminate Self Theme', and first premiered at *SCAPE comma festival as part of Singapore Art Week 2023

• Movement Artist, Gallery Mix Presents Syndicate Sessions: Anise x Sonia Kwek (movement x music live performance): Light to Night Festival 2023, National Gallery Singapore

• Creator and Performer, mise en femme (work-in-progress live performance): Off Stage program, con.tact Contemporary Dance Festival 2022 

• Artist, nudes.jpg (virtual exhibition): T:>Works' Festival of Women N.O.W. 2021

• Creator and Performer, Hymen Instinct (live performance) in double-bill Alternative Lessons for Women, The Substation SeptFest in March 2021

Residencies:

• 2022: Selected artist collective YOUNG BODIES at 136 Goethe Lab by Goethe-Institut Singapore (Singapore)

• 2020-2021: Associate Member at Dance Nucleus (Singapore)

• 2019: Invited Artist for How do you do? #4: Representation & Appropriation artist lab by Auawirleben Theaterfestival Bern (Switzerland)

• 2018: Selected Artist for Time Place Space: Nomad mobile art laboratory by Arts House Melbourne (Australia)

Features and Publications: 

• 2022: Guest Artist (podcast) on Episode 3: Physical Labour, Soma Stories 

• 2022: Co-Writer (feature article online) of unruly bodies do not frighten me anymore, SingPoWriMo Issue 9

• 2021: Artist interview in On Holding Space (a commemorative print publication), Object Lessons Space

• 2021: Artist interview (online) and print editorial shoot (July issue), Female Magazine 

• 2021: Artist Interview (video), ArtsEquator

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Photo by Aaditya Sundar