Wonder World: Enter The Machine of Nostalgia reimagines the amusement parks of 1950s Singapore as a fantastical world transported through time. Once spaces of escape, aspiration and possibility, these parks offered more than entertainment- they were self-contained worlds where people could imagine brighter futures. Drawing from the legacy of Singapore’s former “world amusement parks”, Wonder World recreates their spectacle while critically examining the nostalgia they now evoke.

Commissioned by the National Heritage Board and presented at the Singapore Night Festival, the work is also shaped by its own context of display- situated within an official heritage framework and a contemporary festival setting. This framing becomes part of the work’s inquiry into how nostalgia is not only felt, but actively produced, curated, and commodified.

The project asks what fuels our longing for “simpler and better times”, and how such longing is packaged into experiences of belonging, identity and heritage in a rapidly changing city. In an age of remakes, remasters and throwbacks, Wonder World invites visitors to look beyond familiar images of the past and consider how heritage is constructed, consumed, and reimagined for the present.

Its central attractions- The Endless Chase- recall classic amusement park rides, their continuous motion symbolising the cyclical pursuit of a better life. While this pursuit is often individual, the rides create shared moments of collective experience, echoing a more communal past.

Ultimately, Wonder World uses nostalgia not as simple remembrance, but as a lens to question how the past is packaged and sold, and what this reveals about the futures we continue to desire.