National Gallery: Singapore Stories

I believe I visited Singapore Stories when I was in Singapore in February, but some of the pieces appear to have rotated. The gallery starts with depictions of early colonial Singapore up till contemporary art. Many of the pieces depicted activities that are no longer done in Singapore today, such as pineapple cultivation, brick making, dairy farming, and drying salted fish.

One artwork titled Potong Pasir Dairy Farmer struck a chord in me. It depicted a man who was worn from hard physical labor, but he still looked dignified. My primary school was in the vicinity of Potong Pasir. Because it is a well-established school, the students are mostly sons of alumni, and the overall demographic skewed towards boys from privileged, English speaking families. In my class, however, was one boy from the local farming community. In a perverse way, I suspect he was a diversity admission. He barely spoke English, his uniform was never ironed, and he failed Primary One. My mind wandered to what happened to him, and if he ever managed to find his way in Singapore’s hyper competitive system.

Another piece that resonated with me was a photograph of a trans woman (or maybe just a cross dresser) on the once infamous, now sanitized Bugis Street. Once Bugis St was shut down and redeveloped, trans women mostly went underground.Read more