This morning when I got up, turned my laptop on and, as I normally do, began my day at BBC News I learned that Lee Kuan Yew had died a few hours earlier.
He was very old and had been ill for some time, so this was no great shock though it will lead to much eulogising and reflection in Singapore, the city-state he effectively created.
Unlike the founder of Indonesia, Sukarno, Lee Kuan Yew (or Harry Lee as he was originally known) was not much interested in art whereas Sukarno was both a serious painter himself and an avid art collector. His favourite artist was Basuki Abdullah. I attach a painting by Sukarno and one by Abdullah that he owned (you can see I am not at this moment in Malaysia – Ha Ha!)
Sukarno. Rini. 1958
Basuki Abdullah. Back to Nature
But most importantly, Sukarno created a situation in Indonesia where artists were respected and taken seriously. The art school on Jogja was opened within days of the founding of the Republic of Indonesia. Even in his final moments when Suharto had marginalised him and his power was vestigial he was trying to save left wing artists from execution: “Hey Musbagyo,” he reportedly told the army commander at Jogja, “you have to save all of my artists. None of them ought to be killed. Even if you have to detain them, don’t let them leave Jogja. It is a lot easier to make a hundred of engineers or doctors, than one artist.”[1]
What difference would it have made to the arts in Singapore if LKY (Lee Kuan Yew) had been interested in art – or even if his wife had been? Let’s think about that question on and off for the rest of this year. Certainly, it is the case that artists here feel they have always had to struggle against the state and its ideologies. This is, as you probably know, the most expensive town in the world, a global business centre, but there is no BA in Art History, only several BAs in Arts Management – how depressing is that!
They didn’t start collecting art for the National Gallery until the early Nineties and will only finally open that gallery this year – fifty years after Independence.[2] In contrast, Malaysia set up its National Gallery in 1958, a year after independence
Nevertheless, the artists are interesting and do interesting things!
Last week I went on an Open House tour of Joo Chiat.
Where and what is Joo Chiat?
It is an area of Singapore where a lot of old (early twentieth century) buildings, especially shop houses, have survived. Because it was a reasonably wealthy area they were ornamented in Peranakan style.[3] Also, because it is not so near the centre it has not been so cleaned up as some areas are – dare I say – “Disneyfied”?
This was the fifth of Open House projects curated by artist and curator Alan Oei (aka Evil Empire). In each, work by a dozen artists was placed in houses or flats of a particular area.
Of course, like everyone else I really enjoy going into other people’s houses and seeing what they own and how they live! I went on the last tour at 7.45 – after sunset – which was atmospheric but meant my photos are even worse than normal! (Yes, I could get press photos from Alan but there is an odd logic that all photos in these letters should be taken by me.)
These exhibitions have not been so much a poor man’s chambres des amis[4] as exercises in local psychogeography. This time we went to an old boat, four homes, a hotel and the site where a house once was.
In the first house we saw pathways of plastic roses by Guo Yixiu, something she connects with nostalgia, and we also saw Mr. and Mrs Tan themselves who had got bored and come home. There were two guides leading about twenty people in my group – you see one here! They told us as much about the area as the artists. This house – see the image of it from outside – is archetypal peranakan, bright and shiny!
The third house was owned by two ex-pats (Jason and Gigi) who have had a beautiful interior built for them with bamboo growing inside a covered courtyard. Alecia Neo piled their long wooden table with leaves and projected images of trees waving in the wind on the walls. Smaller screens showed simple religious acts of washing. This was very beautiful and calming.
The last house belonged to Wei Chun who is a fashion photographer. Alan and his partner Felicia Lin made an installation where cold blue light filled an internal courtyard and spilled into the flat proper. Wei Chun was woken once by a girl falling through the glass roof into this area. She was a Vietnamese girl working illegally as a prostitute (yes, it is that sort of area) and the police took her away. Over 2030 written in big neon blue letters is added “Save Joo Chiat”.
There is a Save Joo Chiat Working group, but as Alan’s catalogue points out, do they want to save Joo Chiat as it is, or sanitised? There is already a ban on more bars or clubs in the area. In a city as churned up and gentrified as Singapore maintaining some old areas with their smells and tastes and history is crucial. Moreover the pressure on land in Singapore is intense as the government plan to add another 2,000,000 residents by 2030. There is a call for buildings to be higher and higher.
At the end of yesterday I went to a lecture on the contemporary in Singapore by Charles Merewether. Before he was allowed to begin, a eulogy on LKY was read out and we were asked to observe a minute’s silence. It felt odd. I can’t remember doing that when Winston Churchill died – though we were given a day off from school for the funeral ☺.
Have a good Tuesday!
Tony
I am quoting from an interview I did with the artist Djoko Pekik who was arrested in 1965, imprisoned, beaten but escaped death because of this intervention. ↑
The Singapore Art Museum, opened in 1996 was a stop gap solution. ↑
The first Chinese immigrants to Malaya and Singapore were merchants who settled down, married Malay women and created a hybrid culture which features highly ornamented ceramics and interiors. Peranakan food is a highly palatable blend of Malay and Chinese. ↑
An exhibition curated by Jan Hoet in 1986 where 51 artists installed artworks in 59 different houses in Ghent. ↑