THE GRAD EXPECTATIONS 2025: NAFA’S NEXT GENERATION RETHINKS THE ROLE OF ART AND DESIGN

Some graduations come with applause. Others leave you speechless.

This May, The Grad Expectations (TGE) 2025 returns to the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) — not as a show-and-tell, but as a clear, deliberate statement: Singapore’s next wave of creative minds are not just ready — they’re already thinking ahead. From 6 to 29 May, more than 500 students from Fine Art, Design & Media, and Fashion Studies will turn classrooms and galleries into living, questioning, moving spaces.

Organised by NAFA, now part of the University of the Arts Singapore (UAS), this year’s TGE is ambitious in scale and grounded in relevance. The works aren’t just well-crafted; they’re emotionally intelligent, socially tuned, and deeply personal.

The showcase begins with a series of durational performances (6 and 10 May), where graduating Fine Art students confront identity, loss, surveillance, memory, and more — using their bodies, objects, and environments as storytelling tools. The Fine Art exhibition (6–13 May) continues these threads, with installations and works that are less about answers, more about reckoning.

From 22 to 29 May, the spotlight moves to the Design Show. Held at both NAFA and the National Design Centre, the exhibition explores cultural memory, future-use design, and the everyday objects we overlook. These aren’t prototypes — they’re provocations.

But it’s the Fashion for Dementia runway presentation on 29 May that stands apart. Collaborating with SingHealth Community Hospitals, final-year students in Fashion Business Management created adaptive fashion collections specifically for people living with dementia. These aren’t conceptual gestures — they’re functional, wearable, and quietly radical. The designs blend storytelling, utility, and compassion, proving that fashion doesn’t need to shout to speak powerfully.

Also on 29 May: NAFA’s Fashion Studies graduates present their final collections — personal explorations of transformation, heritage, and the emotional landscape of dressing. Each piece is a narrative in motion — a blend of technique, purpose, and cultural sharpness.

“This year, we’re seeing design not just as aesthetic expression, but as a tool for engagement,” said Sabrina Long, Dean of NAFA’s Faculty of Art & Design. “These students are shaping work that asks: what does it mean to design with empathy, urgency, and imagination?”

At its best, a graduation showcase doesn’t just show skill — it shows intention. The Grad Expectations 2025 doesn’t just present talent. It presents thought. And it asks viewers to lean in, question more, and expect more — not only from artists, but from the world we make together.