In Search of the Tragic Spirits Choy Ka Fai

Created in 2020 as part of Choy’s ongoing CosmicWander project, the film explores shamanic dance culture in Asia as a form of resilience and resistance. Focusing on the Buryat people, a diaspora displaced across Siberia, Mongolia and northeastern China, Choy examines how shamanism has helped communities navigate grief, oppression, and the erasure of cultural identity. Drawing on 18 months of research and interviews with over 50 local shamans, the film transforms ritual, movement and sound into a poetic meditation on belonging, survival and the radical power of cultural memory.

Experience this immersive work on the giant screen in the picturesque surroundings of the grounds at IMMA.

Living Canvas at IMMA is in partnership with IPUT Real Estate, Ireland’s leading property investment company and visionary supporter of the arts.

About Choy Ka Fai

Choy Ka Fai is a Berlin-based Singaporean artist. His multidisciplinary art practice situates itself at the intersection of dance, media art and performance. Through research expeditions, pseudo-scientific experiments and documentary performances, Ka Fai appropriates technologies and narratives to imagine new futures of the human body and speculate on realms of reality other than our own.

Choy Ka Fai graduated in Design Interaction from the Royal College of Art London, under a National Arts Council Singapore Overseas Scholarship, and was conferred the Singapore Young Artist Award in 2010. While working in the performing arts field at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London; ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna; and Kyoto Experiment, he has expanded his activities into the field of visual arts, including solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Singapore and KINDL in Berlin (2021), as well as group exhibitions at the Biennale of Sydney and Bundeskunsthalle (2024).