We don’t normally talk about art in the sense of its identity. We might be talking about art with descriptions like Western oil painting, European sculpture, native American art, and etc, but more often than not we use these terms in a more relaxed, loose way, as a way to denote broadly a category or genre, rather than attaching a weighted, more fixated sense of identity to the medium or the style. However, when it comes to Chinese ink painting, issues of identity are hard to ignore. Regardless whether we talk about Chinese ink painting as a genre, a style, or just a medium of artistic choice, the underlying idea of its identity tied to Chinese nationality and/or Chinese culture is hard to shake. It sounds like a matter-of-course, and since majority of artists working with Chinese ink are Chinese artists from China, it does not seem a huge crisis. But things can get complicated when Chinese ink painting artists are not from China, and/or not necessarily identify with being Chinese, nationally, culturally or both.
Chinese ink artists in Singapore are such a group often caught agonizing over reconciliation of Chinese ink’s loaded identity with their own sense of identity. You might say this crisis was more self-imposed, but let’s first try to understand a bit of history to understand why the stronghold, even if self-imposed, was real. Since the late 19th to the beginning of the 20th century, there were waves of Chinese immigration from China to the region we know as the Southeast Asia, or Nanyang (meaning ‘South of Ocean’, a commonly used Chinese term for the region), in search for work, better life and to escape the prolonged turmoils in China due to wars and various other crises. These Chinese immigrants settled everywhere throughout the region, with the highest concentration landed in the Malay Peninsula, and the island of Singapore to the south. In 1965 Singapore became an independent nation with majority of her population being Chinese descent. Over the decades, independent Singapore continued to grow rapidly economically and despite her tiny island size, she fast became an economic powerhouse in the region. Most first generation Chinese immigrant artists predominantly worked in Chinese ink, often painted in more traditional style of Chinese landscape and flower/bird ink painting partly due to their training in China, partly due to their sense of cultural identification, though a lot of these artists also worked with oil (which was also part of these immigrant artists’ art training back home as art education in the early 20th century China was embracing the idea that being ‘westernized’ was being ‘modernized’ so western style painting and oil medium were widely taught and used). Soon after they arrived and settled down in the multicultural region of Southeast Asia or Nanyang, Chinese ink artists felt the urgency to negotiate their art’s relevance in their new environment and they had realized it was a challenging task, as Chinese ink, for millennia, had been associated with being core to Chinese art and culture. The historical concept that Chinese calligraphy and Chinese painting were one and the same, and to learn the art was amongst the most noble and virtuous pursuits of government officials, scholars, or the cultured underlined its paramount status as the soul of Chinese culture. In other words, Chinese ink was an identity, and to paint Chinese ink painting, was an expression and affirmation of the artist’s Chinese identity, or so people thought. This was especially true amongst China-born artists who came to Singapore and the region as immigrants. Not willing to give up their Chinese identity and loyalty, while struggling with the need to assimilate themselves into their new environment and to find relevance and resonance for Chinese ink painting in Singapore was at the heart of these artists’ sense of crisis.
As part of their attempt to assimilate into their new culture and environment as artists, many started to focus on local subject matter, and shifted away from traditional subjects on Chinese landscape of high mountains and waters and Chinese flora and fauna which were not part of their environment in Singapore and the tropical region. This deliberate focus on local subject matter also played a part in defining the local modernist movement, the Nanyang Style, which was coined retrospectively. Later generations of artists who were born and raised in Singapore, especially those born after 1965, are generally less crisis-ridden by splitted identity, and see even less need to attach a strong identity label to the use of Chinese ink. Though some still inevitably struggle with Chinese ink’s ’ “non-local” identity, most ink artists in Singapore have moved on and focused their creative energy in using Chinese ink freely to express themselves as contemporary artists in Singapore.
As Singapore grew stronger economically and matured as a nation, many started to debate on what constitutes a unified Singaporean identity and what should Singapore’s cultural identity be like, considering the nation’s multicultural DNA. Under this overarching context of the nation’s search for identity, Chinese ink painting, which has been a significant part of Singapore’s art scene, has often come under the spotlight. One of the most high-level questions being asked is, is there a difference between Chinese ink painting in Singapore and one in China? A simple answer to that is YES. But to say how is not so straightforward. However, one more definitive trend is that among Singapore’s younger generations of ink artists, Chinese ink is approached more as a medium of choice for its artistic quality. Occasionally, Chinese ink is used for its symbolism by artists to communicate. In another words, less and less artists working in Chinese ink in Singapore feel too hijacked by Chinese ink’s loaded identity or too bothered by its cultural baggage, like their predecessors used to do. There also seems to exist a sort of consensus among artists in Singapore to make art that reflects their unique Singaporean-ness and Southeast Asian-ness, though these terms are somewhat elusive, like most when it comes to identity. Nonetheless, many believe, Singapore’s ink painting or ink art with more distinct “flavor” is a work-in-process and has increasingly taken hold.
This reminds me that I often wonder about identity of just about anything. I have been asking myself “who I am” for as long as I remember, and my answer to it, I recognize, has come bit by bit, building on and adding to what I already have. Sometimes items on the list are modified or deleted, and still, my answer to that question is evolving. In the same token, my identity as a person is also a work-in-process. It may continue to be so for as long as I live.
Curious case will always be curious.
