Last week, as I was scurrying by Niven Road, a quite lane behind Selegie Road looking for some food as I was attending a workshop at Emily Hill, I chanced upon a relatively new art gallery which is currently having an exhibition.
Called The Evil Empire, the gallery is both a space that conducts art workshops and an art gallery run by Salon Projects. What caught my eyes when I passed the gallery was the current exhibition which they are running. Called – Negaraku Boleh, it is an art exhibition by 10 artists from Singapore and Malaysia. Curated by Mr Alan Oei, Negaraku Boleh celebrates both the straits National Day from the 9th August to the 31st August which the artists revisit the heady days of preindependence, an uncertain but optimistic period when our nations were just coming into our own.
The 10 artitsts were all born after the independence and separations of the 2 nations. As mentioned by the curator himself, working only with artists born after the this period, the exhibition asks what it means to call ourselves Singaporean or Malaysians – when prior to 1963, we were all part of a loose geographic expression, Malaya. A Chinese writer had once said, “The culture of Singapore, Malaysia is essentially the same.”
The 10 artists are :
Singapore: Andre Tan | Ang Song Nian | Francis Ng | Ng Joon Kiat | Zhao Renhui
Malaysia: Chong Kim Chiew | Kow Leong Kiang | Saiful Razman | Sharon Chin | Yee I-Lann
More pictures on Artitute’s Flickr
Visit Negaraku Boleh! (My Country Can!) at Evil Empire, 48 Niven Road from 9 Aug to 31 Aug. Open daily Tue to Sun, 2pm to 8pm. We are open on National Day 9th Aug. For more details, check www.evilempire.asia .
