By Eva McGovern
How do we understand national history, our identity within it and the collective generations (including our own) that have shaped it? And within this understanding, how can we challenge, complicate and revise these narratives, to build new ways of reading and remembering complex issues that continue to haunt official propagandas of progress and modernity? These questions fuel the obsessive practice of Green Zeng, an artist who consumes and reconfigures codes and symbols found within the historical trajectories of Singapore. Functioning as a storyteller, artist, filmmaker and subsequent historian, he obsessively researches critical moments of dissonance from the 1950s and 60s that have been systematically erased from official versions of Singapore’s evolution. In Chinese School Lessons Zeng selects the Chinese Middle School Movement to present a semiotic lesson in language and politics across a group of unique ‘chalk boards’ that fill the gallery space for his latest solo at Chan Hampe. Combining specific ideas around systems of education and nationhood he attempts to provoke an uncomfortable dialogue around the forgotten histories of Singapore.
Zeng’s visual inspiration first begins with Singapore’s foremost Social Realist painter Chua Mia Tee (b.1936) and his iconic work National Language Class (1959), now in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum. A Chinese migrant from the Guangdong Province, Chua’s early works reflected the nationalistic aspirations of 1950s Singapore. This was the decade of the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) against the British via a guerrilla led Communist revolt that took place on the peninsular, as well as various anti-colonial actions organised by the Socialists in Singapore. The painting itself depicts a classroom, where young men and women from various classes and language backgrounds sit around a circular table, during a Malay language lesson. On the black board behind their ethnically Malay teacher are written two questions in Bahasa: Siapa nama kamu? (what’s is your name?) and Di mana awak tinggal (where do you live?). During that time, it was Malay that was promoted as the lingua franca of the fledgling multiracial nation, who in 1959 had just received internally self-governing status within the Commonwealth with Lee Kuan Yew as the First Prime Minister. However, rather than a visual revision of the painting, Zeng seizes upon the blackboard and what is written on it to review the history of language and its relationship to identity. These two seemingly, innocent questions: what is your name? and where do you come from? the first phrases learnt when trying to speak a new language, necessarily allow Zeng, a wider platform to open up dialogue on cultural issues and the politics of place.
The artist’s own blackboards seen throughout the exhibition are historically located earlier in the 50s, during the Chinese Middle School Movement. The Chinese Middle School (now known as the Chinese High School) was founded in 1919 and was the first independent school to cater to different dialect groups among overseas Chinese in the region. It was also a hot bed of Communist aligned political activity that saw many demonstrations and rioting. The most famous of these was the May 13 1954 protest where 500 Chinese students, reacting against recently enforced military conscription, clashed with police. This incident ignited and united the Chinese Middle School students who later became a political force within the leftist movement hastening the process of Singapore self-determination. Nevertheless, Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock later dissolved the school Union in 1956. In protest against the dissolution, students gathered at the Chinese Middle School and the Chung Cheng High School for sit-ins and demonstrations. However, after two weeks, the Government publically demanded that the schools be vacated. As the deadline approached riots erupted at the Chinese Middle School spreading to other parts of the island. Thirteen people were killed, more than 100 were injured and over nine hundred people were arrested. They were later released when the People’s Action Party came to power.
These two points of visual and political references meet at the junction of Green Zeng’s latest works. By combining images of silkscreened school uniforms, hand written cursive words in English, Chinese and Malay, with flags of colonial power, Zeng presents triggers points to remember and analyse histories of dissent and self agency. The white uniforms, of both teenage boys and girls, are not therefore, an expression of conformity or control, but rather the collective strength of the Chinese youth invested in the future, emboldened by threats to their beliefs, as emphasised through their repetition in pairs and single configurations, throughout the exhibition. As such these uniforms function as reminders of specific moments in time, with the names of the students written in Chinese, appearing in one work, acting as a type of haunted memorial. Such ‘ghosts’ represent the voices of rebellion, seemingly absent in today’s generation of young people. But Zeng’s work is not an outright form of political provocation but rather a whispering of evocative images and words as visual footnotes to histories gone by.
Language and text is a current source of interest for the artist. His recent project at this year’s Oh! Open House project in Marine Parade, textually encouraged visitors to speak more dialects (in response to campaigns for Singaporean Chinese to speak more Mandarin instead of their own dialects) functioning as an attempt to reclaim and preserve cultural uniqueness. In Chinese School Lessons he combines various words from English, Chinese and Malay to set tones of progress, unity and division within multiracial Singapore. By juxtaposing words from different languages: silence, origin, race, Nanyang, nation, spirit, unite, strike, dawn, Malaya, on the same image and sometimes written against a British or Japanese flag, Zeng loads his surfaces with poetic tensions. What emerges is a conversation between Motherlands, of China and Singapore, of multiculturalism and monoculture as well as the histories of colonialism (Britain) and occupation (Japan) and how youth movements can challenge these systems of power. It is a process of questioning rather than answering that shares the complications of a country built on migrancy and how it has evolved to become a cohesive contradiction.
The question of ‘what’s my name’ and ‘where do I come from’ therefore seems to be the most appropriate entry point into Chinese School Lessons. In a multiracial society like Singapore, these questions are constantly being asked, with answers redefined on a yearly basis, depending on agendas, understandings of history and cultural allegiances. By locating this within the perspective of the Chinese majority, Zeng presents his own shared cultural histories and anxieties through carefully articulated historical, textual and visual references. Time travelling across Singapore’s history from the 1950s and 60s as in his previous solo projects The Exile Revisits the City and Malayan Exchange: Notes of the Future he selects fragments from the past to disturb and provoke present understandings of nation and identity. It is a lesson of remembrance, of times and people forgotten in order to reflect upon who we are now, where we live and how we define ourselves in contemporary Singapore today.
Eva McGovern is a curator and writer. She managed and curated for Manila Contemporary, a commercial gallery that focuses on contemporary Filipino Art. From 2010-2012 she was Head of Regional Programmes for Valentine Willie Fine Art managing the exhibition programme of the 4 partner galleries in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Manila and Yogyakarta. Eva has guest lectured at the Lasalle College of the Arts and the Sotheby’s Institute, Singapore and has contributed to international journals such as Off the Edge, Malaysia, Broadsheet, Australia, Timeout KL, Esquire Malaysia and Arts Asia Pacific, Hong Kong. She was the Contributing Editor for C-Arts, Singapore and Managing Editor for http://www.arterimalaysia.com. Eva writes broadly on South East Asian contemporary art. Prior to living in South East Asia she worked at the Serpentine Gallery, a public contemporary art institution in London on public programmes, exhibitions and publications. She is currently based in Manila, Philippines. Essay written on the occasion of the exhibition“ Chinese School Lessons” at Chan Hampe Galleries. Exhibition Dates: 26 September – 18 October 2012. © Green Zeng, All Rights Reserved
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