The exhibition is co-held by 5 Singapore-based artists, namely Justin Lee, Genevieve Chua, Michael Lee, and Joo Choo Lin and Chun Kai Qun who play out their responses to the city as part of this year's Singapore Art Show, at the vast spaces of the National Museum's Rotunda, Glass Passage, Glass Atrium and The Atelier.
The first visual art started off with a collaboration between Choon Lin and Kai Qun, who are both concerned with the rapid pace of urban development, especially the adverse effects on the environment and the behaviour of its inhabitants. The animation shows the plight of creatures when their land is being developed, while the diorama, which is also used as a scene in the animation, is a wasteland. The creatures seem to represent us Singaporeans living in a construction-based environment. As Singapore is a relatively small country, everywhere and everyday we can see new buildings on the rise and neighbourhood reconstruction is happening everywhere. Construction is indeed a way to modernization and improving people physical well-beings (example life upgrade can benefit the residents in the long run). However, construction is a scary image that people fear in their life. Noise pollution and physical changes are found in statistics to be increasing stress in individual’s life. Construction has impact our life so much that we are losing our culture and traditions. Chinatown is been revamped until the external buildings’ design look like intact but the cultures and emotions evoked by the buildings are all gone.
The second visual art illustrates Justin Lee by featuring a small army of terracotta warriors, gentle ladies from olden Tang dynasty China, and auspicious cranes in a procession ceremony. The figurines are interestingly integrated with elements of contrasting commercialisation such as technology gadgets - headphones, laptops, and coca cola cans. Warriers listening to MP3 while marching, gentle ladies playing with laptop and even auspicious cranes play around with coke cans. Doesn’t it serve like an irony? Chinese soldiers during the dynasty periods are always depict as serious and order-controlling slaves of the emperors. However, Justin chooses to portray that with modernization, even the serious-looking soldiers will slacken with the fun that modernization brings for today’s individuals. Even the gentle ladies will also pick laptop and internet as their past-time, contrast to our perception of virtuous ladies being well-versed in qin (music instruments), qi (chess), shu (poetry), hua (paintings). Finally, with modernization, even the Chinese offerings to the auspicious cranes during the procession ceremony may revert to coca cola instead of the traditional offering items such as fruits and chicken.
It seems like modernization is influencing all over the world that even traditions and perceptions are evolving. Traditions like reading books are giving way to e-books. Interestingly, Justin chooses to show a contrast between the olden traditions and people and those of technology gadgets. It seems to indicate modernization go all the way out to even haunting the old traditions to give way. Even religion is on the decline. Is our traditions and culture giving way? Yes I believe so.
The third visual art presents a model-and-text installation of “National Columbarium of Singapore” created by Michael Lee Hong Hwe. The installation features 100 of lost Singapore architecture which includes models of demolished buildings as well as fictitious and unbuilt structures. The miniature buildings that we saw in HDB or other housing development exhibitions are always illustrate in real colours and inbuilt in realistic environment. However, the installations are all painted in white. It seems to trigger one’s memory and illustrates the 100 lost architectures living in another space. Most of the lost architectures are demolished before my birth so I don’t have many emotion-linked memories of them. However, this visual art indeed triggers my feeling towards the impact of urban development, memory, and naming. Previously before government intervention, Singapore-based company was allowed to use the word “Singapore” in the company naming. However, from the early 90s onwards, Singapore-based companies are not allowed to do so anymore. Isn’t Singapore urban development history interesting?
The fourth visual art presents a video of “Full Moon & Foxes” by Genevieve Chua. The video seems to illustrate a narrative of late adolescence and the period towards the end of innocence. When I enter the dark room, I was instantly struck by fear and alertness. I sit in the middle of the room. The screen before me starts to play. The 2 screens in front of me seem like the eyes of mine and my real side is viewing every action from behind my eye balls. Sometimes, I feel myself viewing a person, sometimes many people at one people. The people I saw triggers fear within me. They seem to be related to me in some sense, certainly they are not me. But indeed they seem to remind me of myself. The foxes moving in front of me all seem to be troubled and seem like their hearts are facing death. Everyone seems tired to move on, move on to the next stage of adolescence, which is maturity. Innocence is always the best bet in the society. For example, underage is the best bet for escaping jail sentence when commit a crime. Fear is normally the word used in today’s times to describe growing up, especially for girls. However, regardless girl or boy, growing up represents a sense of responsibility and burden.
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