Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance continues the celebration of freedom of expression in Singapore since 2016

This year, we partner with Art Porters to proudly present "Life is Beautiful", a LGBTQ-friendly group exhibition featuring art especially commissioned from Nicole Kelly (Australia), Naraphat Sakarthornsap (Thailand) and Mulyana (Indonesia) that celebrates the beauty of life, and honours the diversity of human experience and expression through unique perspectives.

We also continue to celebrate our local artists, Bhavani Bala, Bart Seng Wen Long, Joy Ho and Marla Bendini who take us on a unique journey through their lens.

View our photo highlights and virtual gallery below.

"Life is Beautiful", a LGBTQ-friendly group exhibition featuring art especially commissioned from Nicole Kelly (Australia), Naraphat Sakarthornsap (Thailand) and Mulyana (Indonesia).

Bhavani Bala (b.1994, India) is an illustrator, improv coach, and workshop facilitator.

She received her BA (Hons) in Architecture at the National University of Singapore in 2016 and is currently pursuing an MDes in Communication Design at the Glasgow School of Art.

Bhav's work exists to spark joy to the viewer. They use vibrant colours and whimsical themes to talk about important topics that help people resonate with their work. Her inspirations come from film, video games, and her own lived experiences, especially as a third culture kid, and her struggles with mental illness.

Marla Bendini (b. 1986, Singapore) is a BFA Interactive Media graduate of School of Art, Design & Media (ADM), Nanyang Technological University (2013), where she focused on interactive video installations, film and performance. She started painting and making installations during her junior college education (2004).

Marla Bendini is a cross-disciplinary artist and trans woman working in painting, text, sound and performance to articulate the infinitely faceted transgender experience on her own terms.
Bendini's current painting practice uses the female gaze through a combination of writing, drawing, painting, collage and printmaking to create layered 'documentations' of a unique woman's experience.

Marla Bendini is represented by Cuturi Gallery, Singapore. She has performed and exhibited in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Macau, Hong Kong, Sweden, Spain, Australia, London and the United States of America

Joy is an illustrator, cartoonist, and designer based in sunny Singapore. They graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in illustration with a minor in art history. Their illustrations often take the form of colourful people-centered work, or inked dog comics. They work with clients internationally including NPR, Channel News Asia, National Singapore Museum, and also organise and design for the local Queer Zinefest.

Born and bred in Singapore, Bart is a visual artist, fiction writer and curator currently based in London.

His multi-media practice conjures uncanny scenes from contemporary cultures, where fluid identities collide and intermingle, all the while situating within them an autobiographical array of themes like self-fetishisation, fantasia, otherness, trauma, human connection, mythology and the neoliberal capitalist singularity. With an approach to art-making that centres mistranslation across mediums, aesthetics, (im)materiality and contexts, Bart hopes to reveal unexpected modes of feeling and being, desiring and labouring.

Bart was selected to be part of Dazed x Circa’s Class of 2021, a Tour de Moon grantee, and is co-curator of Kawaii Agency. His work has been featured on SHOWstudio, Time Out Singapore, Female, It’s Nice That, British Journal of Photography, Sticky Fingers and Dazed.