In 1988, Tang founded The Artists Village. The first art colony to be established in Singapore, it aimed to encourage artists to create experimental art. Members of the Village were among the first contemporary artists in Singapore, and also among the first to begin practising installation art and performance art. There, Tang mentored younger artists and informed them about artistic developments in other parts of the world. He also organized exhibitions and symposia at the Village, and arranged for it to collaborate with the National Museum Art Gallery and the National Arts Council's 1992 Singapore Festival of the Arts.
In January 1994, the National Arts Council (NAC) stopped funding unscripted performance art following a controversial performance by Josef Ng that was regarded as obscene by many members of the public. From that time, Tang and other performance artists mostly practised their art abroad, although some performances were presented in Singapore as dance or theatre. For his originality and influence in performance art in Southeast Asia, among other things, Tang won the Arts and Culture Prize in 1999 at the 10th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prizes. The NAC eventually reversed its no-funding rule on performance art in September 2003. Tang was one of four artists who represented Singapore at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Tang's work is part of the collection of the Singapore Art Museum, Queensland Art Gallery and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.[1][2][3]
Tang has expressed concern about environmental and social issues through his art, such as the works They Poach the Rhino, Chop Off His Horn and Make This Drink (1989) and Tiger's Whip (1991). He believes in the potential of the individual and collective to effect social changes, and his art deals with national and cultural identities. Tang has participated in numerous community and public art projects, workshops and performances.
Tang Da Wu was born Thang Kian Hiong in Singapore in 1943,[4] the eldest of four sons. His second brother Thang Kiang How is himself a visual artist based in Singapore.[5] His father was a journalist with the Chinese daily newspaper Sin Chew Jit Poh[6][7] He studied at a Chinese-medium school,[8] but disliked English and mathematics and was often scolded by his teachers. He preferred playing after school with neighbourhood children and learned to speak Malay and Chinese from them. He also enjoyed drawing, and gained confidence when his secondary school paintings were accepted in art competitions.[9]
Tang is married to an Englishwoman, Hazel McIntosh.[14] They have a son, Ben Zai, known professionally as Zai Tang, who is a sound artist living in the UK.[4][6][15]
Career
Early career and founding of The Artists Village
Returning to Singapore in 1979 after completing his undergraduate studies, Tang engaged in performance art,[4] works of art that are composed of actions performed by the artist at a certain place and time. The following year, he staged a work of installation art called Earthworks at the National Museum Art Gallery. This comprised two works, The Product of the Sun and Me and The Product of the Rain and Me, which were made up of dishes of earth, lumps of soil, and pieces of soiled and water-stained linen which he had hung in gullies at Ang Mo Kio, a construction site in the process of being turned into a public housing estate.[6] Installation art uses sculptural materials, and sometimes other media such as sound, video and performance, to modify the way a particular space is experienced.
In 1988, Tang founded The Artists Village, originally located at 61B Lorong Gambas in rural Ulu Sembawang, in the north part of Singapore. The first art colony to be established in Singapore, its goal was to inspire artists to create experimental art.[14] Tang described the Artists Village as:
... [an] alternative venue dedicated to the promotion and encouragement of experimental and alternative arts in Singapore. It endeavors to establish an open space for artists to mature at their own pace, and to provide a conducive environment which allows them to experiment, experience and exchange ideas.[16]
T.K. Sabapathy noted: "The Village was a beacon, and Da Wu both a catalyst and mentor."[17] Among the artists who moved to the Village were Ahmad Mashadi, Faizal Fadil, Amanda Heng, Ho Soon Yeen, Lim Poh Teck, Tang Mun Kit, Wong Shih Yaw, Juliana Yasin and Zai Kuning.[18] They were among the first contemporary artists in Singapore, and also among the first to begin practising installation art and performance art. Tang mentored younger artists and exposed them to artistic developments in other parts of the world.[14] He also organized exhibitions and symposia at the Village, and arranged for collaborations with the National Museum Art Gallery and the National Arts Council's 1992 Singapore Festival of the Arts.[18] Although The Artists Village lost its original site in 1990 due to land development,[19] it was registered as a non-profit society in February 1992 and now stages events in various public spaces.[20]
In January 1994, artist Josef Ng cut off his pubic hair with his back to the audience during a performance protesting the media's coverage of gay issues. The event was reported by The New Paper, and the resulting public outcry over its perceived obscenity led the National Arts Council (NAC) to cease funding unscripted performance art. After that, Tang and other performance artists practised their art mostly abroad, although some performances were presented in Singapore as dance or theatre. Interviewed in August 2001, T. Sasitharan, co-director of the Practice Performing Arts School, said that a review of the NAC's policy was "long overdue" and noted that although Tang had received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 1999, "the art form he practises is de facto banned in Singapore". The NAC eventually reversed its no-funding rule on performance art in September 2003.[21]
In August 1995, the President of SingaporeOng Teng Cheong visited Singapore Art '95, an exhibition and sale of artworks by Singapore artists. Tang wore a black jacket emblazoned on the back with "Don't give money to the arts" in yellow and handed a note to the President that read, "I am an artist. I am important."[22] Although Tang was prevented from speaking to the President by an aide-de-camp, he later told the media he wished to tell the President that artists are important and that public money funded the "wrong kind of art", art that was too commercial and had no taste.[23]
Recent activities
Tang was the subject of one episode of artist Ho Tzu Nyen's documentary television series 4x4 Episodes of Singapore Art, which was broadcast on Arts Central (present-day Okto channel) in October 2005.[24] He was also one of the four artists representing Singapore at the 2007 Venice Biennale. He presented an installation, Untitled, consisting of two beds positioned upright, the trunks of plantain trees, a portable ancestral altar, a handmade album of drawings and photographs, and other found objects. Drawings of people and faces were strapped to the beds and wrapped around the tree trunks. The installation was accompanied by a recording by Tang's son, Zai Tang, of sounds captured in Venice during a single day. The work was described by the National Arts Council as suggestive of "the restlessness, rootlessness, spiritual wandering and emotional estrangement that mark the travelling life".[4][25] In 2007, a work by Tang consisting of ink paintings around a well, and representing the erosion of village communities by urban development, was acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery for its Gallery of Modern Art.[26] From January to June 2016, Tang presented Earth Work 1979 at the National Gallery Singapore, a re-staging of his 1979 exhibition, the first recorded instance of Singapore land art. The exhibition includes "Gully Curtains", where Tang placed large pieces of fabric between gullies and let the rain and sun mark the fabric.[27] His work Tiger's Whip (1991) is also displayed at the National Gallery's DBS Singapore Gallery.[28] In 2017, Tang started the performance-art group Station House Da Opera, comprising more than 60 art educators, students, and fellow local artists.[29]
Known for his reticence, Tang remains an enigmatic person. In an August 2008 interview with the Straits Times, fellow artist Vincent Leow said of Tang: "He's a very hands-on person, very improvisational and has good ideas. But he doesn't really talk much. You can't really tell who he is."[6]
Art
Tang has expressed concern about environmental and social issues through his art, such as the works They Poach the Rhino, Chop Off His Horn and Make This Drink (1989), Under the Table All Going One Direction (1992) and Tiger's Whip, also known as I Want My Penis Back (1991). He first presented the latter work, an installation and performance piece, in 1991 in Singapore's Chinatown. It consisted of ten life-sized tigers made from wire mesh covered with white linen. Tang, wearing a sleeveless white garment, would perform amidst them as poacher, tiger, and man consuming the tiger's penis.[18]
Tang Da Wu & the participants of A Sculpture Seminar, Tiger's Whip (also known as I Want My Penis Back), 1991, Mixed media, Dimensions variable, Collection of the Singapore Art Museum
A modified version of the work was further developed as an installation during the two-week A Sculpture Seminar organised by Tang in 1991 to discuss ideas about sculpture, with many artists from The Artists Village participating.[30] Tang brought one of the tigers from his earlier performances of Tiger's Whip as a teaching tool, and participants contributed their thoughts on its form and structure.[30] This process led to the creation of the final form of the installation, collaboratively developed and exhibited during A Sculpture Seminar, as a single tiger pouncing on a rocking chair, with a trail of red fabric akin to a stream of blood.[30] In February 1995, the Museum chose Tiger's Whip to represent Singapore at the Africus International Biennale in Johannesburg, South Africa.[31] Another of Tang's works in the Singapore Art Museum is an untitled sculpture often called Axe (1991), which is an axe with a plant growing out of its wooden handle.[32] It is regarded as an early example of found object art in Singapore.[33]
A focus of Tang's art is the theme of national and cultural identities, I Was Born Japanese (1995) being an example.[4] Tang notes that he has had four nationalities. He was issued with a Japanese birth certificate as he was born during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. He became a British national after World War II, a Malaysian citizen when Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, and a Singaporean citizen when Singapore gained full independence in 1965.[9] While living in the UK he was conscious of his Chinese identity, but later on he took the view that he might not be fully Chinese since China had been occupied by the Mongols and Manchurians: "I'm not sure if I'm 100% Chinese blood. I'm sure my ancestor has got mixture of Mongolian and even Thai and Miao people [sic]. We are all mixed, and this is true. But I always like to think that there is only one race in the world. We are all one human race."[8] Another of Tang's performances, Jantung Pisang – Heart of a Tree, Heart of a People,[34] centres around the banana tree. He was inspired by the fact that the banana is used widely in Southeast Asia as an offering to bring blessings, but is also feared as it is associated with ghosts and spirits.[8][9] He also sees banana trees as a reminder of the lack of democracy in certain parts of the world: "Democracy in many Asian countries and Third World countries is as shallow as the roots of a banana tree. We need to deepen [democracy]."[35]
Tang has participated in numerous community and public art projects, workshops and performances, as he believes in the potential of the individual and collective to effect social changes.[4] He has said: "An artist should introduce to others what he sees and learns of something. His works should provoke thoughts, not to please the eyes or to entertain, much less for decoration."[11]
Awards
Tang received a Singapore International Foundation art grant to participate in the International Art Symposium in Meiho, Japan, in October 1994.[36] In March the following year, he received a trophy and S$20,000 from the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry Foundation.[37] For his originality and influence in performance art in Southeast Asia, among other contributions, Tang won the Arts and Culture Prize in 1999 at the 10th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prizes which were established by Fukuoka and Yokatopia Foundation to honour outstanding work of individuals or organizations to preserve and create the unique and diverse culture of Asia.[6][8][38]
To Make Friends is All We Want in 1989 Big O Concert with music performance by Joe Ng of Corporate Toil, Singapore Music Festival 1989
Performance
Orchard Road, Singapore
Life Boat
Cuppage Village Singapore
The Artists Village Show Home Documentation
Drawing, painting
Art Base Gallery Singapore
Gooseman; Open the Gate; Dancing UV; Selling Handicaps; In the End, My Mother Decided to Eat Dogfood and Catfood The Artists Village 2nd Open Studio Show
Asian Artist Today – Fukuoka Annual V: Tang Da Wu Exhibition (They Poach the Rhino, Chop Off His Horn and Make This Drink, In the End, My Mother Decided to Eat Dogfood and Catfood, and Tiger's Whip)
Fukuoka Art Museum Fukuoka, Japan
1992
Under the Table All Going One Direction New Art from Southeast Asia 1992
No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia[52] (group exhibition) Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative – Volume 1: South and Southeast Asia (Our Children, 2012)
Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s–1990s[59] (group exhibition) (They Poach the Rhino, Chop Off His Horn and Make This Drink, 1989 and Gully Curtains, 1979/2016)
Some of the information in the table above was obtained from [Tang Da Wu: Artist CV], Valentine Willie Fine Art, 2006, archived from the original on 10 February 2008, retrieved 18 October 2008.
^ abSharifah Arfah (28 January 2006), "Faces of Singapore", New Straits Times.
^ abcAdeline Chia (7 August 2008), "First artist colony", The Straits Times.
^David Chew (8 September 2006), "Pushing boundaries; Familiar sights and sounds get a new twist from local audio-visual artist Zai Tang", Today, p. 58.
^Clarissa Oon (27 August 2001), "Look back, look forward", The Straits Times; Clarissa Oon (21 October 2003), "Hello, yellow fellow", The Straits Times; Cheah Ui-Hoon (28 November 2003), "Coming in from the cold", The Business Times (Singapore).
^Sian E. Jay (15 November 2000), "Ironic twist to Substation fund-raiser", The Straits Times.
^ ab"Pay more attention to the arts – President", The Straits Times, 12 August 1995.
^Clara Chow (27 September 2005), "Four to the fore", The Straits Times (Life!); Dana Lam Yoke Kiew (4 November 2005), "Arts series a good show [letter]", The Straits Times (Life!).
^See also Adeline Chia (26 April 2007), "Bien there, done that ... now what?", The Straits Times (Life!).
^ abcToh, Charmaine (2015). "Shifting Grounds". In Low, Sze Wee (ed.). Siapa Nama Kamu? Art in Singapore Since the 19th Century. National Gallery Singapore. p. 92. ISBN9789810973841.
^Phan Ming Yen (2 February 1995), "American glass sculptor's work will be on permanent display", The Straits Times; Leong Weng Kam (19 February 1995), "Aces go places – Singapore artists making their mark overseas", The Straits Times.
^"Five must-see exhibits", The Straits Times (Life!), 7 August 2008.
^Seng Yu Jin (13 September 2008), "It takes a village to shape an arts scene", The Straits Times (Life!).
^Jantung is Malay for "core" or "heart", while pisang means "banana": R.J. Wilkinson; A.E. Coope; Mohd. Ali bin Mohamed (1963), "jantong; pisang", An Abridged Malay–English English–Malay Dictionary (Pocket ed.), London: Macmillan & Co., pp. 104, 212.
^"New Asian artists lauded at events marking Fukuoka culture awards", Yomiuri Shimbun, 6 October 1999.
^Lee Yin Luen (10 May 1995), "SIF's $230,000 helps smoothen road for talented Singaporeans", The Straits Times.
^"Japanese business group gives out $211,000", The Straits Times, 31 March 1995.
^"Tang Da Wu bags Arts and Culture Prize", The Straits Times, 14 July 1999.
^Kuo Pao Kun (22 October 1993), "Better to have a worthy failure than a mediocre success", The Straits Times.
^Leong Weng Kam (9 January 1995), "Creating a city through art – a Japanese town of wonder and discovery", The Straits Times.
Toh, Charmaine (2022). Tang Da Wu: Performance and Pedagogy.Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 6 (1), 195-202. doi:10.1353/sen.2022.0010, retrieved 17 April 2023.
Sabapathy, T.K. (1993), "Contemporary Art in Singapore: An Introduction", in Turner, Caroline (ed.), Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, pp. 83–92, ISBN978-0-7022-2583-3.
Sabapathy, T.K. (1998), Trimurti and Ten Years After, Singapore: Singapore Art Museum.
Sreshthaputra, Wanphen (3 January 2002), "Art fest a big hit with Singaporeans: A diverse range of media is employed but the quality of the works on display is mixed", Bangkok Post.
Map of South America [by] Tang Da Wu, Postcolonial Literature and Culture Web, University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore, April 2000, archived from the original on 2 July 2007, retrieved 25 February 2009.
Woman with Snake in a Cage by Tang Da Wu, Postcolonial Literature and Culture Web, University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore, April 2000, archived from the original on 4 July 2007, retrieved 25 February 2009.
