How artists respond to such a rapidly changing environment is at the heart of several new exhibitions in town. They form part of the Singapore Art Show, a two-month visual-arts event involving more than 300 Singaporean or Singapore-based artists showcasing their work in 47 venues, ranging from museums and art galleries to shopping malls and nature reserves. Established to promote local work, the event does not have an overarching theme. But perhaps unsurprisingly in a city obsessed with making its mark on the region, Singapore itself is at the heart of many of the exhibitions. “Every city in Asia is in competition with one another to be ’the city’,” says Seng Yu Jin, a co-curator of “Imagining the City,” one of the festival’s anchor shows. “For artists it’s appealing because they can respond to the changes they see. The theme of city is in a way a metaphor on how their own lives are changing.”
The offerings reveal a mixed bag of feelings. Nostalgia dominates many of the works, including some by doyen artist Lim Tze Peng, 84, whose “Singapore River” depicts the traditional boats unloading at warehouses that have since been converted into bars and restaurants. It was recently painted from a sketch he’d done only 20 years ago, and uses warm golden hues to convey a sentimental vision of a life that has already vanished. Leading contemporary ink painter Chua Ek Kay also looks back on a city that is fast disappearing, capturing old shophouses, narrow alleyways and tiled roofs. “I’m not trying to depict the scenery faithfully or in its entirety,” he says. “Painting these shophouses is for me a way of reflecting not just on the disappearance of buildings, but of a cultural past and social heritage as well.”
Some works react to the overzealous sprouting of a city seeking to transform itself to First World status. In “Trengganu Street,” Raymond Lau Poo Seng bemoans the theme-park-like transformation of neighborhoods like the old Chinatown, where the streets are now reserved for pedestrians and shophouses have been cheerfully painted to attract tourists. “The area used to sell raw meat; now it’s full of tourist stalls,” says Lau. “It is no longer the real Chinatown of my childhood, with its grime and grit.”
Several artists have chosen to reflect on living in a densely populated city. In “Spectrum,” Terence Lin uses wooden strips and panels of various sizes and thicknesses, wrapped in printed fabrics, painted or collaged and clustered randomly together against a wall. “The idea is to arrange a tapestry looking like a cityscape,” the artist explains. “The closeness of the blocks relates to our dense living conditions.” Max Kong Kum Chuen’s “Portable Buildings” consists of five tall, narrow canvases meant to resemble tower blocks, with tiny square windows made out of cement.
Tower blocks are also the unlikely subject of an ink and color painting by Tan Oe Pang, who creates a twist on the traditional Chinese scroll landscape painting in which artists show only part of the mountain. In his works, Tan shows only parts of iconic Singaporean buildings—including the HDB blocks, public-housing projects that accommodate 80 percent of the nation’s population.
While some of the artists show interest in the changing architecture of the city, others dwell on the social impact of the continuing redevelopment. Several installations reflect on the fundamental, yet often underestimated contribution of migrant workers to the city’s growth. In the installation “Foreign Talents,” the art group Vertical Submarine erects a temporary statue of a migrant worker opposite a statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, revered as the architect of modern Singapore, that has stood beside the Singapore River for many years. It is a provocative symbol of a city still dramatically in flux.
