The timeliness of these environmental and emotional questions is uncanny as the north-eastern monsoon season has been unusually dry this year, characterised by a lack of rain rather than abundance. Smoke from burning rain forests and peat blowing in from nearby Indonesia lingers in the air and provides a sober backdrop to the exhibitions that probe a range of environmental issues and our feelings about them. Indeed, as a researcher in environmental communication, the art week provides a space to take the pulse of public environmental concerns, as artists invite the public to feel and reflect on environmental issues through their creations.
An exhibition named Cry Now is perhaps one of the most explicit creations on this theme. It is a direct invitation to the public to share sadness and anxiety they might otherwise conceal in the everyday, as they get on with their daily matters in the unusually dry weather scorching the evergreens. Indeed, emotional distance as a coping strategy is a theme many of the artists at the exhibition seek to confront.
As I move into the gallery and leave the smog temporarily behind, I am immediately confronted by a realistic artwork of a roadkill. On the wall behind there are paintings of caged pandas and people smiling and clapping enthusiastically while viewing them.
“The viewer is placed in a position where they must reconsider their own distance, complicity and desire for comfort”, reflects Desmond Mah in the art brochure about his work at Cry Now.¹
“Cry Now asks us to sit with discomfort, rather than resolve it quickly”², he continues and stresses that, in his view, people tend to treat ecological matters as a performance and spectacle to avoid confronting their unease.
In the centre of the exhibition is a large colorful painting with the words Cry Now. Apart from its central position, its pop aesthetics make it stand out. Pearl Hsiung, whose artworks have inspired the curated exhibition, reveals her motivation for Cry Now in the exhibition leaflet:
“The speed and overwhelm of the crisis elicited this work. While I still believe we need to be proactive and retain hope, it is also necessary to confront and mourn the countless losses and deaths of species, habitats, and lifeways immediately.”³ To weep is not only a way to acknowledge the senselessness of these deaths, but also an act of honoring them, she concludes.⁴
In both artists’ work, I hear echoes from studies of the role of emotions in environmental communication: emotional distance as a coping strategy, empathy with more-than-humans, the importance of hope, and the overwhelming speed of the climate crisis encountered through digital spaces, which seems to overwhelm us.
But I also hear something new. The exhibition is primarily an invitation to feel something together, to sit with these feelings and the discomfort they may bring, and then to nurture and reflect on them. It concerns how we can take care of our environmental emotions and how we together can live and act with them.
Cry Now, Talk Now – a public panel discussion to which I am later invited to share my views on environmental communication and emotions – is meant to do exactly this. It is a space for emotional reflection as we take care of our concerns and discuss how to sit with our common discomforts. Tan Sok Fong’s artwork “Drifting promise” is the center point of discussion – an installation made up of plastic bottles picked up from the sea. Papers containing public concerns about environmental issues are stuck to the bottles, messages intended metaphorically to travel the seas, ending up on a foreign shore.
As some of these concerns are made public, distress about the changing weather emerges as a common theme in the revealed messages.
“The weather in Singapore has become extreme with its heat, cold and floods! A/C no longer cold enough, condensation kicks in!” reads one. Our common discussion takes off from there, as everyday experiences and emotions on the theme are shared.
As I exit the exhibition, the rain finally begins to fall.
Or does it?
It could also be me and the fellow exiting visitors who let our tears pour to water the ground in a common, cathartic cry.
Carin Graminius is a researcher in environmental communication and part of MISTRA Environmental Communication. Her work in MISTRA Environmental Communication concerns the role of emotions in environmental meaning-making. She is currently in Singapore for a research exchange at NUS, National University of Singapore, made possible by an early career research grant from FORMAS.
¹⁻² Liu Chenhao, K., (2026). Cry Now. Asian Geographic: heal our world, p. 19
³⁻⁴ Liu Chenhao, K., (2026). Cry Now. Asian Geographic: heal our world, p. 37
"A Cry Out of Emotions at Singapore Art Week: Exploring Collective Environmental Concerns"
The timeliness of these environmental and emotional questions is uncanny as the north-eastern monsoon season has been unusually dry this year, characterised by a lack of rain rather than abundance. Smoke from burning rain forests and peat blowing in from nearby Indonesia lingers in the air and provides a sober backdrop to the exhibitions that probe a range of environmental issues and our feelings about them. Indeed, as a researcher in environmental communication, the art week provides a space to take the pulse of public environmental concerns, as artists invite the public to feel and reflect on environmental issues through their creations.
An exhibition named Cry Now is perhaps one of the most explicit creations on this theme. It is a direct invitation to the public to share sadness and anxiety they might otherwise conceal in the everyday, as they get on with their daily matters in the unusually dry weather scorching the evergreens. Indeed, emotional distance as a coping strategy is a theme many of the artists at the exhibition seek to confront.
As I move into the gallery and leave the smog temporarily behind, I am immediately confronted by a realistic artwork of a roadkill. On the wall behind there are paintings of caged pandas and people smiling and clapping enthusiastically while viewing them.
“The viewer is placed in a position where they must reconsider their own distance, complicity and desire for comfort”, reflects Desmond Mah in the art brochure about his work at Cry Now.¹
In the centre of the exhibition is a large colorful painting with the words Cry Now. Apart from its central position, its pop aesthetics make it stand out. Pearl Hsiung, whose artworks have inspired the curated exhibition, reveals her motivation for Cry Now in the exhibition leaflet:
“The speed and overwhelm of the crisis elicited this work. While I still believe we need to be proactive and retain hope, it is also necessary to confront and mourn the countless losses and deaths of species, habitats, and lifeways immediately.”³ To weep is not only a way to acknowledge the senselessness of these deaths, but also an act of honoring them, she concludes.⁴
In both artists’ work, I hear echoes from studies of the role of emotions in environmental communication: emotional distance as a coping strategy, empathy with more-than-humans, the importance of hope, and the overwhelming speed of the climate crisis encountered through digital spaces, which seems to overwhelm us.
But I also hear something new. The exhibition is primarily an invitation to feel something together, to sit with these feelings and the discomfort they may bring, and then to nurture and reflect on them. It concerns how we can take care of our environmental emotions and how we together can live and act with them.
Cry Now, Talk Now – a public panel discussion to which I am later invited to share my views on environmental communication and emotions – is meant to do exactly this. It is a space for emotional reflection as we take care of our concerns and discuss how to sit with our common discomforts. Tan Sok Fong’s artwork “Drifting promise” is the center point of discussion – an installation made up of plastic bottles picked up from the sea. Papers containing public concerns about environmental issues are stuck to the bottles, messages intended metaphorically to travel the seas, ending up on a foreign shore.
As some of these concerns are made public, distress about the changing weather emerges as a common theme in the revealed messages.
“The weather in Singapore has become extreme with its heat, cold and floods! A/C no longer cold enough, condensation kicks in!” reads one. Our common discussion takes off from there, as everyday experiences and emotions on the theme are shared.
As I exit the exhibition, the rain finally begins to fall.
Or does it?
It could also be me and the fellow exiting visitors who let our tears pour to water the ground in a common, cathartic cry.
Carin Graminius is a researcher in environmental communication and part of MISTRA Environmental Communication. Her work in MISTRA Environmental Communication concerns the role of emotions in environmental meaning-making. She is currently in Singapore for a research exchange at NUS, National University of Singapore, made possible by an early career research grant from FORMAS.
¹⁻² Liu Chenhao, K., (2026). Cry Now. Asian Geographic: heal our world, p. 19
³⁻⁴ Liu Chenhao, K., (2026). Cry Now. Asian Geographic: heal our world, p. 37