Upon becoming a volunteer guide at the Singapore Art Museum shortly after her arrival in Singapore in 2008, Daniela decided to turn her passion and appreciation for Southeast Asian contemporary art into a more structured and grounded path. She enrolled in the Masters in Asian Art Histories programme at LASALLE in its inaugural run in 2010. Whilst it provided her with academic, critical and knowledge foundations, it marked a stepping stone in her career as it gave her the confidence to start testing her potential as curator and art writer. Her thesis attempted to propose a concept of contemporary artist by looking at the oeuvre of Indonesian artist Heri Dono.

Contextually, sensing a gap all too often misleading between art theory and art practice, Daniela has embarked on an experiential journey within performance art. The practical exploration of such discipline is continuously complementing the on-going theoretical research and the personal art appreciation, thus assisting her in the refinement of her artistic sensibility.

Since her first curatorial project in 2010, Daniela has consistently tried to probe artistic practices within Singapore and the Southeast Asian region in the direction of marginal spaces, where she could recover the authenticity and connectedness between art and life, that she finds regretfully missing in most main-stream and market-oriented works. Both with the curatorial practice and art writing, she tries to stay focused on her intent to promote an experience of art that on one side is non-elitist and yet probing and on the other can offer opportunities for alternative and more visceral readings and reflections.

Benefiting from a strong humanistic background, ultimately her efforts tend to encourage the audience of her exhibitions, writings and performances into a more holistic experience of art as a means to cultivate their own individual aesthetic sense and to recover their humanity beyond the flimsy parameters of a decadent and commodity-driven society.

As her artistic interests become clearer with furthering the various threads of research, my plans will eventually hover around obtaining a PhD in philosophical and/or anthropological studies in connection with performance art with particular attention to the Southeast Asian region.