Wesley’s medium-defying works spanning across literary arts, film, television, performance and theatre have been nominated at the Busan International Film Festival, NUS Singapore History Prize, Epigram Books Fiction Prize, and awarded at the Singapore Book Prize.
Based in Singapore, Wesley Leon Aroozoo is an artist with 13 Little Pictures, an educator with LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore and is pursuing his PhD at the RMIT University in the School of Media and Communication. Wesley received his Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing from New York University and Bachelor of Fine Arts (with honours) in Digital Filmmaking from Nanyang Technological University.
Passionate about using his creative practice to shed light on lesser-known histories in Singapore, Wesley’s historical fiction novel The Punkhawala and The Prostitute (Epigram Books, 2021) is a Singapore Book Prize Winner, The Straits Times Weekly Bestseller, NUS Singapore History Prize Nominee and Epigram Books Fiction Prize Finalist. It was also featured on Channel News Asia and at The Substation’s Artist Journey You are Obviously in the Right Place.
His debut novel Bedok Reservoir (Math Paper Press, 2012) was translated to the stage at the Goodman Arts Centre where Wesley also performed the accompanying live music. The feature documentary, companion to his second bilingual non-fiction novel I Want to Go Home (Math Paper Press, 2017 and 2018), had its World Premiere at the Busan International Film Festival where it was nominated for the Mecenat Award. I Want to Go Home was also adapted as a multi-sensory exhibit at the Light to Nights Festival at The Arts House. Always exploring new disciplines, Wesley took to the stage in 2022 at The Arts House with his performance The Overhead to a sold-out audience at Storyfest and returned in 2023 with his performance This is Not a Bench.
As a filmmaker, Wesley’s films have been screened in festivals such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Sapporo International Short Film Festival. He was awarded the Talents Tokyo Development Grant from Tokyo Filmex and was a commissioned filmmaker for the Asian Film Archive’s Fragments Anthology. For television, Wesley was the screenwriter behind Mediacorp’s telemovie Cats and Dogs: The Chronicles of a Pest Detective, which starred Pierre Png. In 2023, Wesley collaborated with Mothership with his documentary Returning World War 2 relics to their rightful owner in Australia. Continuing his exploration with lesser known histories, in 2024 Wesley’s documentary on the abandoned Salmon Maternity Home introduced viewers to an amazing discovery while his edu-tainment historical series What the Street! was executive produced by Viddsee.
Wesley previously lectured at Nanyang Technological University and has taught workshops for the Singapore Mental Health Film Festival, Singapore Book Council, Singapore Writers Festival and Raffles Institution.
Email: moomeow@gmail.com