These Singaporean Artists Explore Themes Of Memory And Nostalgia In Their Work
It's called the art of reflection.
Dictionary.Com defines nostalgia as “a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends”. Ahead, we zero in on five Singapore artists interpreting this often‐intangible quality as well as the notion of time and memory only to evoke poignancy, curiosity and even plenty of laughs.
ANG JUN ZUAN
In the playful hands of this 30‐year‐old, who works in the day as an art director at a design agency, mundane items find a whole new and often absurdist lease of life. Take his po chai pills series, in which the traditional Chinese medicine popularly used to treat indigestion or diarrhoea becomes a part of a locket necklace with a vial of the tiny pills for a pendant, or the prize in a miniature gashapon machine.
Ang Jun Zuan likes working with quotidian objects such as retro snacks and other household items that he grew up with because of their “plainness”.
Those who grew up in – or have been exposed to – the pre‐Internet age would recognise several of the objects he toys with in his body of work as an artist. (Retro snacks are another one of his favourite motifs, for example.)
“I enjoy finding relationships between different mundane objects and mashing them to see what else they could be, and sometimes, things turn out really absurd," says Ang.
Ang takes a day to create and document his work on his Instagram page @thisisjz, - he sees his craft as straddling the fields of art and design, and his intention can be said to be suitably innocent: “I just want to make everyone laugh. That’s my KPI (key performance indicator). I used to make nonsensical zines and comics about poop and farts in primary school, and people laughed at them. Nothing much has changed today, I think.”
KELVIN LIM
More popularly known as New World Plaza, this digital artist has been archiving all sorts of retro Asian packaging, signage, posters, “ugly” ads and old magazines since the early 2000s. For him, a big part of their appeal lies in how – especially in the past – people across Asia adapted Western cultural influences, often resulting in comedy gold (just look up “Engrish” in Japan, for instance).
Kelvin Lim’s personal archive of retro Asian packaging and media paraphernalia collected over the years has become the foundation for his art. He digitally manipulates and remixes them to create irreverent works meant to evoke a time when life was taken less seriously.
Since launching his full‐time artist career under said moniker in 2022, the 43‐year‐old – who previously worked at media companies such as MTV – has become known for his own hyperstylish and LOL‐funny take on such vintage visuals, all created through digital manipulation and on display on his Instagram page @neworldplaza.
His collection includes wearable merch such as T‐shirts and bumbags that reference retro brands in Singapore (see the tees promoting Yaohan, a popular Japanese department store that arrived in Singapore in the 1970s), and digital posters riffing off the fashion and technology of earlier decades.
Posterised effects with saturated colours, and so‐bad‐it’s‐good 1980s‐era styling and photography are all part of his signature style – as is grammatically erroneous copy. (See, for example, a satirical swimwear ad titled Are You Live For Pleasure, which reads “‘After All, if Live isn’t a Pleasure, Why You?’”.) He’s not just paying tribute to the past aesthetically, but is in fact also alluding to a time when people “all had much thicker skin for taking the piss”.
“My main goal is to celebrate an old image and give it a second life,” he says. “The messaging in these images might originally have been intended to be political or social, but I try to steer away from that because life itself today is pretty brutal. I just want to create something that makes me and my audience feel good.”
HONG SHU‐YING
This 27‐year‐old’s works tend to be a tad abstract, yet they never fail to also possess a sense of familiarity. As part of her practice, she revisits things that she has seen and heard before, driven by sheer curiosity and a tenderness for past experiences. She then recontextualises them into something new or – as she puts it – “tinkers with memories”.
Hong Shu‐ying’s works tend to recontextualise what is familiar and nostalgic into something new and abstract. Growing up with the erhu inspired this work, 尘惦 Chéndiàn; After Scans And Lingering Dust – a series of images of music scores that had been magnified to capture what’s left of the markings made by previous performers, which had been eroded over time because of the repeated act of copying, reading and sharing.
Take the work shown above, titled 尘惦 Chéndiàn; After Scans And Lingering Dust. While the images may resemble X‐rays of microbes, they’re in fact extreme close‐ups of Chinese instrumental scores – Hong spent most of her childhood and adolescent years as an erhu player in Chinese orchestras, and that musical background continues to inform her work as an artist.
Magnifying music scores led her to notice notation marks that had been left behind by previous performers, though details had gradually been eroded from repeated use in the same way time turns things into dust. Explains Hong: “This work was an extended process of looking and relooking. The ambiguity of what the final images depict also creates a space to get lost in, and in which one can slowly think and observe.”
AKAI CHEW
This 36‐year‐old studied architecture at the University of Tasmania, where there was a strong emphasis on engaging with Australia’s contentious past with its indigenous people. This reinforced his fascination with history, but – as he points out – the history of contested spaces is often shaped by the perspective of those who dominate them. Since then, he has been using photography and architecture to present hidden or alternative memories of urban spaces.
The architecture‐trained Akai Chew uses his multi‐media work to present hidden meanings of urban spaces, encouraging viewers to rethink their histories. For instance, the photo on the above reimagines a present‐day HDB block on Waterloo Street as a historical monument.
Take, for example, Fragment Of A Shoreline – a 55m‐long installation resembling a beach that he created with design studio Spatial Anatomy and sound artist OFTRT for the 2022 edition of the Light to Night Festival. Curiously, this “beach” was set up in the middle of the Padang as an allusion to where Singapore’s original shoreline ended, according to old maps dating back to 1843 that Chew and team had stumbled across.
This surrealistic "beach" by artist Akai Chew, design studio Spatial Anatomy and sound artist OFTRT, was positioned in the middle of the Padang as a nod to history - this is where Singapore's original shoreline ended, according to old maps of the country dating back to 1843.
By evoking this historical landmark, the work was a nod to how the country’s landscape has morphed through extensive reclamation and urban development, in turn inviting audiences to reflect on the myths of our city’s early history and its modern transformation. The work, says Chew, was essentially “about deep nostalgia for a beach that existed in 1843”.
RENEE YEO
This emerging artist who graduated from the fine art bachelor's programme at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts this year is deeply into exploring relationships, intergenerational dialogues and cultural identity. The 25‐year‐old, you see, is a third‐generation Singaporean of Kinmenese heritage.
Her obsession with her background even compelled her to spend eight months shooting across Singapore and Kinmen – a group of islands governed by Taiwan that’s geographically very close to Xiamen in Fujian, China – on her own to create a film titled My Ah Gong is Kinmenese for her final‐year school project. The short, which is slightly more than three minutes long, is also meant to be a tribute to her granddad, who had migrated from Kinmen to Singapore.
Renee Yeo’s background as a Singaporean of Kinmenese heritage has sparked in her a fascination with cross‐cultural identities and led her to use nostalgia to explore deeper notions about family relationships and memory. Exemplifying her practice: A short film titled My Ah Gong is Kinmenese (a still from the film pictured here), in which she shot across Singapore and Kinmen over a period of eight months, to create a tribute to her grandfather, a Kinmenese migrant.
Yeo's installation Fabricated Memories (pictured), which combines pictures of herself with pre-loved fabrics in her grandparents' collection, is her way of crystalling memories of her late grandparents.
Another work that delves into notions of family and recollection is the installation Fabricated Memories, comprising a cloth cradle (pictured above) created using pre‐loved textiles owned by her grandparents as well as images of Yeo as a young child. The artist reveals: She didn’t take any photos with her grandparents – both of whom have passed on – so the piece is meant to be a metaphorical bridge connecting her to them. “The work turns intangible memories into something tangible,” she explains. “This not only preserves, but also reimagines personal and collective memories, making the concept of nostalgia both meaningful and accessible.”
This article first appeared in the September 2024 Nostalgia Edition of FEMALE