Cultural Exchange: Singapore embraces art to enhance its image

Lee Wen has the wiry frame and slumped shoulders of a man accustomed to making the most of scant resources. As one of Singapore’s few performance artists active in the 1990s, he lived on the margins of society, surviving brushes with the authorities while forging a body of work based on spontaneous individual expression in a country where it is largely frowned upon.

“Because of the unscripted nature of it, the authorities were always worried about what we were going to do,” Lee said. Those worries came to a head in 1994, when the government instituted a de-facto ban on performance art in response to artist Josef Ng’s trimming his pubic hair at a festival Lee helped curate.

But Lee’s fortunes have changed dramatically. Singapore, in an effort to alter its reputation as an oasis — or wasteland, depending on how you look at it — of tidy, soulless efficiency, began an enormous effort to reposition itself as an international arts hub in an effort to boost its international status and attract global capital and talent.

To that end, the government spent nearly $1.5 billion on art and culture from 2005 to 2010, one of the highest per capita rates in the world. State funding has supported a range of projects, including the $460-million Esplanade, a shimmering waterfront performance complex that hosts everything from Chinese chamber music to indie rock; the planned National Art Gallery, which will house the world’s largest public collection of modern Southeast Asian art when it opens in 2015; and small grants for artists and galleries.

The city that novelist William Gibson described in a 1993 Wired essay as “Disneyland with the death penalty” now puts on a biennial that attracts international talent and has an arts infrastructure that would be the envy of most cities. On any given weekend, Singapore buzzes with dozens of openings, performances and festivals, helping it to emerge as a credible rival to Hong Kong as a leading center of regional art.

“We have come a long way in a very short time,” said Stephanie Fong, who runs the city’s Fost Gallery, which is between locations. “None of this would have been possible without government funding.”

With this new emphasis on the arts, Lee and his contemporaries have gone from pariahs to national treasures almost overnight. In 2005, he received the Cultural Medallion, the government’s highest such award, and next year he is the subject of a major show at the Singapore Art Museum titled “Lucid Dreams in the Reverie of the Real.”

On the sidelines of a panel discussion last month at the National University of Singapore, Lee was circumspect — and a touch bemused — about his newfound status. “Have I become an approved radical?” he asked, his eyes widening with delight. “But I’m always walking the tightrope” between pushing boundaries and “trying to not end up with a criminal record,” he said. In 2008, he performed fully nude but skirted the need for a permit, required for all public exhibitions and performances, by hosting it as an invitation-only event in a private space.

“Singapore is such a small island. We can’t run away from the government. Everything is under state control, every avenue of life,” he added.

Indeed, despite the government’s commitment to fostering the arts, Singapore has some of the tightest restrictions on expression in the developed world. The People’s Action Party, which has ruled continuously since 1959, limits speech in all realms of public life. Reporters Without Borders ranked it 136 out of 178 in its Press Freedom Index 2010, worse than Zimbabwe and Iraq.

With increased affluence have come rapidly rising real estate and living costs. Because the private art market is still underdeveloped, artists are dependent on government funds to pay for studio space and other expenses. Applicants for such funding must agree to not criticize the government, and artists say there are unspoken rules against addressing taboo subjects such as religion, race and sex — what many would consider contemporary art’s go-to subjects.

“It’s a very controlled environment here. This makes for second-rate art,” said Valentine Willie, who operates galleries in a number of Southeast Asian cities, including Singapore. Owners and curators — not just artists — can be held responsible for what goes up on a venue’s walls, leading to caution and self-censorship.

The laws also apply to foreign artists brought in for international exhibitions, resulting in some high-profile controversies. This year, British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara had images of gay erotica removed from his installation at the Singapore Biennial, leading him to withdraw his work from the show.

Despite government restrictions, society at large is becoming more accepting of artists, said Woon Tien Wei, an artist and cofounder of Post-Museum, one of the few independent art spaces in the city.

Despite difficulties, some young artists are managing to carve out a space outside of the government system, where bureaucrats measure progress with metrics such as “exhibition days.” Woon and his Post-Museum cofounder, Jennifer Teo, keep the gallery as independent as possible by collaborating with nongovernmental organizations and running a cafe.

For its part, the government rejects the notion that it is alone is driving the city’s cultural renaissance. “A vibrant arts scene cannot be created from the top down,” Yvonne Tham, deputy chief executive of the National Arts Council, said in an email. “We need the entire ecosystem (artists, intermediaries, audience, government, etc.) to be aligned and working towards the same goals.”

Lorenzo Rudolf, a former director of Art Basel who was brought in to head the Art Stage Singapore festival, said the situation here reminded him of Miami before he launched Art Basel Miami Beach, the American outpost of the international art fair.

“The entire art world declared me totally crazy, asking me how I could launch an art fair in a cultural desert,” he said. Today, of course, Art Basel Miami Beach is the leading North American art fair. “What Miami did, Singapore should also be able to do,” he said.

Still, it remains to be seen whether Singapore can become an incubator of a vibrant local art scene rather than just a focal point for overseas artists and curators. Although several Singaporean artists, including Ming Wong and Jane Lee, have attracted international recognition, many here feel that the local art scene still has a ways to go. “The hardware is there,” said Fong of the Fost Gallery. “But the software needs to catch up.”

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