In a corner of the gallery, a large skeletal bird made from steel perches atop a mound of glass. Her head stretches towards the sky and her beak is wide open in a soundless cry. Behind her, a long, feathered tail sweeps to the floor, creating a striking arc in space. The materials – steel and mirror-glass – and sharp, unfinished edges of the work add to the raw emotion of the piece. Perhaps she is screaming her existence to the world as she emerges from the ashes of her rebirth, before she flies away from our mortal plane. The artwork is SEMBAWANG 深疤凰 (Fig. 1), standing over 2.5 metres high, it is one of Singaporean artist Tang Da Wu’s most ambitious and dramatic sculptures to date. The Chinese title of the work深疤凰 [Shen Ba Huang], literally means “deeply scarred phoenix,” and is a play on the transliteration of “Sembawang.” The seasons of life and death, joy and grief, are all expressed in this deeply personal work.

Fig. 1: Installation view of Tang Da Wu’s 'SEMBAWANG 深疤凰' (2013), as part of the Learning Gallery at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Tang made SEMBAWANG 深疤凰 for a solo exhibition in 2013 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts, as part of a larger suite of works inspired by his long-time neighbourhood of Sembawang. Situated in the far north of Singapore, Sembawang is where Tang grew up and later established The Artists Village in 1988, acknowledged today as a seminal moment in Singapore’s art history. Tang is one of Singapore’s most important contemporary artists, credited for introducing to Singapore new ideas and concepts about art-making, and subsequently influencing multiple generations of artists. Extremely prolific, Tang’s artistic practice spans five decades and multiple mediums, from performance and installation to painting and drawing, and, of course, sculpture. Like the phoenix, Tang’s artworks might seem to diverge at different points of his life, but he always returns to the start, to his origin story in Sembawang. This essay considers the recurrence of that land in Tang’s work and how its geography, history and myths have influenced his work.

Land and Origin

Singaporeans are preoccupied with land – its scarcity, cost and use. Most of us live on leasehold property, which means we do not own the land we live on; rather, we lease it for 99 years, or 999 years in rare cases. It is then returned to the government which can sell or re-lease it to the next property developer. Further back in history, the land was colonised by the British in 1819, occupied by the Japanese in 1942 and retaken by the British in 1945. Singapore joined other British colonies to form Malaysia in 1963 and finally became independent in 1965. On a more personal level, Tang himself was born in 1943, during the Japanese occupation. He moved to the UK for his undergraduate studies in 1969 and only returned to Singapore in 1979 where he stayed for less than a year before moving back to London. In the 1980s, he made more regular visits to Singapore, largely at the invitation of various organisations, and finally moved back in 1987 with his wife and young son. From the 1990s until the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, he has lived between Singapore and London, commuting regularly between the two. While these shifts – historical, political and personal – have deeply informed Tang’s art practice and inspired various works, they have also made him extremely sensitive to the connections between identity and place and the significance of origins.

Tang grew up in the suburb of Sembawang, which is typically seen as a rural part of Singapore, or as rural as any part of the city-state can get. It sits right at the northern edge of the island, closer physically to Malaysia than to the central business district of Singapore. Prior to the 1990s, one could find farms and villages there, before the government redeveloped the land for public housing flats. When Tang returned to Singapore for the first time after almost a decade in the UK, where he had obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) in Sculpture from Birmingham Polytechnic (now known as the University of Birmingham), it was a time of immense change in the physical landscape of the area. The changes were made more apparent by his long absence and he spent much time exploring the area around his home. In particular, he was struck by the soil erosion caused by the clearing of the land to build new flats. The ground was literally shifting and changing before his very eyes.

Tang’s observations and experimentation with the land resulted in his first series of works about Sembawang, which were subsequently exhibited in a show called Earth Work at the National Museum Art Gallery in 1980. One of the works was Gully Curtains (Fig. 2), where Tang placed seven pieces of cloth in a ravine that had formed due to rain. Muddy water stained the bottom of the cloth, and Tang used black ink to trace the depth of the gully. The pieces of cloth were then displayed in the same order that they had lain, creating an imaginary gully through the gallery space. Continuing his interest in the physical quality of the land, Tang also made multiple drawings using the soil he collected in Sembawang. He rubbed the natural pigments onto thick textured paper to create abstract shapes and lines. 100% Old Earth (Fig. 3) features the multiple shades of brown one would expect to find in the soil, but also unexpected colours such as pinks and purples. The earth pigments seem to float on the paper’s surface in delicate layers, perhaps alluding to the fragile beauty of the environment, a fact that we are increasingly aware of today. ¹

Fig. 2: Tang Da Wu, 'Gully Curtains', 1979. Ink and mineral pigment on cloth. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Image courtesy of Joseph Nair.

Fig. 3: Tang Da Wu, '100% Old Earth', 1979. Mineral pigment on paper. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Image courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore.

Tang stayed in Singapore for less than a year before returning to the UK. While he made short visits in the intervening years, his next prolonged stay was from 1987, when he returned to Sembawang, this time with his young family. This part of Tang’s story is well documented.² He moved into a farm at 61-B Lorong Gambas, which he rented from a family member, and started an artist’s commune called The Artists Village (TAV). The farm was available for rent because it was due to be acquired by the government via the Land Acquisition Act. It is important to note that Tang moved into the space knowing that it was temporary. TAV’s location in Sembawang was integral to its perceived identity as an alternative arts space, far away from the mainstream urbanity of modern Singapore. One had to travel for over an hour on public transport to get there.

Tang acted as mentor, curator and organiser for younger artists who gravitated towards him and TAV as a centre for discussion, experimentation and exhibition. The empty rooms in the sprawling farm became studios and galleries, and the courtyards doubled as stages for performances. The exhibitions and events at TAV took on great significance among the arts community in Singapore, giving artists such as Amanda Heng, Zai Kuning, Vincent Leow and Tang Mun Kit some of their earliest opportunities to show to the public. It also taught these artists how to organise events themselves, a skill that would prove essential after they lost the farm site. TAV also became a key destination for curators and researchers, both foreign and local, who could meet multiple artists and find out about the latest happenings within the Singapore art scene. Its significance in crafting an identity for Singapore art cannot be overestimated.

Despite only living on the farm for two years, Tang was extremely prolific during this period. In addition to his well-known performances such as They Poach the Rhino, Chop off His Horn and make this Drink (1989) and Tiger’s Whip (I Want my Penis Back) (1991), which were presented in public sites in Singapore, he made many important performances at TAV, including Dancing UV (Fig. 4) and Close that Gate (Fig. 5), which utilised the different areas of the farm, from the pond to the sheds. He also produced several works that involved the animals on the farm. Gooseman was a performance with the geese that the landlord had given him when he moved in. When one died, Tang mourned with the other geese through a performance at the Second Open Studio Show in 1989. He painted his body white and “spoke” to the geese with sounds and gestures. At the end of the performance, he declared, “I speak English, I speak Chinese, I speak Goose Language.”³ The figure of the goose subsequently appeared in many of his later paintings, as a stand-in for this period of his life at the farm. For example, in Me and My Goose (Fig. 6), a goose is embracing him – its long neck extends over his head while its wings wrap around his shoulders. Tang also made several drawings depicting the snakes that were often caught and killed around the area. Tang felt sorry for the snakes and would buy those that had been caught by his neighbours and free them into the wild in Mandai, near the Singapore Zoo. In an interview many years later, Tang said: “There was a snake in my unconscious. I used to see them every day in the Artist [sic] Village and in my dreams too.”⁴

Fig 4: 'Dancing UV', performance at The Artists Village, 1989. Courtesy of Tang Da Wu.

Fig 5: 'Close that Gate', performance at The Artists Village, 1988. Courtesy of Tang Da Wu.

Fig. 6: Tang Da Wu, 'Me and My Goose', 2005. Ink on paper, 109 x 79 cm. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Image courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore.

Sembagraphie

Tang and the artists had to vacate the farm in 1990, but he continued renting different flats in the same area. He also continued making work inspired by the area and creating a new type of geographical representation of the place or what he later called Sembagraphie. In the mid-1990s, Tang made a large series of semi-abstract drawings about Sembawang that referenced the relationship between Singapore and Malaysia. I earlier mentioned that Sembawang was on the edge of mainland Singapore; on a clear day, one can stand on the coast and see the shoreline of Johor in Malaysia. In an exhibition at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts titled Sembagraphie in 2019⁵, Tang showed Sembarain, Middle Water and The Beach, displaying them in three rows: the first showed the rain falling from the sky, the second illustrated the water that flowed between the two countries and the third depicted the shore (Fig. 7). Water supply has been an ongoing contentious diplomatic issue between Singapore and Malaysia, with the small city-state being dependent on the larger country for much of its water supply, especially in the early years after independence; the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s also saw a major dispute over Pedra Branca, a small island over which both countries claimed ownership. However, these drawings show unclaimed water falling from the sky and the tides moving between the two countries. Floating on the water are mysterious objects, which the artist has left unexplained. In Tang’s work, Sembawang became a site of wonder and freedom; Mother Nature provides for all without charge.

Fig. 7: 'Sembarain, Middle Water and The Beach'. Installation view at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

Tang’s imagination of Sembawang is perhaps most clearly seen in Sembawang (Fig. 8), a four-metre-square map of the area drawn on a raised wooden platform, which was first exhibited together with SEMBAWANG 深疤凰 at the 2013 exhibition in the Institute of Contemporary Arts. However, this is another version of Tang’s Sembagraphie, combining geographical details like the roads, the shorelines and the reservoir, with the myths and stories he had heard from its residents over the years. The artist has narrated, for instance, the tale of an epic fight between a crocodile and a tortoise in Sembawang River, which the tortoise won.⁶ Indeed, the work was first crafted as a stage for Tang’s own stories – visually, it is constructed exactly like a wooden stage and Tang performed on it with his students during the 2013 exhibition. As an artwork, it is most effective when combined with Tang’s own narration. The four skeletal sculptures arranged around the map are the dogs that used to live with him at TAV, transformed into giant sentinel beasts that stand guardian over the land.

Fig. 8: Tang Da Wu, 'Sembawang', 2013. Multimedia installation. Collection of Singapore Art Museum.

SEMBAWANG 深疤凰, on the other hand, is inspired by the tok-tok bird (the long-tailed nightjar), which Tang often saw in Sembawang. The name “tok-tok” comes from the repetitive and unique sound the bird makes, which formed part of the nightly soundscape at TAV. Tang transformed this small, common bird into a magnificent mythical creature, scarred and weeping in Sembawang. The diamond-shaped mirror-glass pieces of her perch represent her copious tears. Together, Sembawang and SEMBAWANG 深疤凰 might be interpreted as Tang’s continual investigation of the land we first saw in Gully Curtains. However, while Gully Curtains commented on the environmental consequences of urban development, these works made three decades later are more poignant. If Gully Curtains was about a physical loss, SEMBAWANG 深疤凰 reflects on the birth and death of TAV as a metaphor for the loss of local culture and history. The two works were later presented in the exhibition After Utopia at the Singapore Art Museum in 2016, a curatorial act highlighting how the 1988 TAV moment has been historicised within Singapore’s art history as a kind of high point of artistic activity and experimentation that has since been lost.

Ten years after making Sembawang and SEMBAWANG 深疤凰, Tang revisited the same themes for a solo exhibition at ShanghART Gallery. In She Asked the Forest for a Moment of Stillness (Fig. 9), Tang presented another phoenix, but this time she has collapsed on the ground; her body taken apart and crushed beneath a wooden skeletal structure. Her beak is open in a cry of anguish that seems to echo SEMBAWANG 深疤凰. Tang has explained that the bird is looking for her missing children, an analogy of Sembawang missing TAV, whose artists had to leave and disperse when the land was repossessed by the government. In another corner of the exhibition, a life-size figure of a man holds the phoenix’s tail, severed from her body. The figure is meant to represent Tang himself; he is performing a tai chi pose called “Grasping the Bird’s Tail.” Tang has said that the work refers to his childlike embrace of and curiosity about the world.⁷ However, next to the dying phoenix, it feels as though he has grabbed her tail in an attempt to save at least one part of this slowly disappearing land. The original TAV is gone and the physical environment has undergone massive changes, but he continues to hold on, perhaps awaiting its rebirth.⁸

Fig. 9: 'She Asked the Forest for a Moment of Stillness'. Installation view at ShanghART. Image courtesy of ShanghART.

It is undeniable that Tang’s engagement with Sembawang has intensified as he has aged. He made SEMBAWANG 深疤凰 when he was 70 years old and She Asked the Forest for a Moment of Stillness when he was 80. While they may seem to be a departure from his more well-known activist works that touch on environmental and political topics, such works are not unprecedented. As I have demonstrated in this essay, the site of Sembawang has remained a consistent preoccupation throughout his lifetime and Tang has also made numerous works dealing with issues of personal identity and displacement that have been overlooked in studies of his practice. These include I was born Japanese (date unknown), sofA sonAA (1986) and Home (1999).⁹ The works about Sembawang made in the last decade seem to mark a distinct shift back to such topics and an ever deeper connection with Sembawang.

In a recent interview about the exhibition at ShanghART, Tang declared: “I’ve already started preparing for and celebrating my death. I welcome it happening.” Bearing Tang’s personal history with Sembawang in mind, birth and death become inextricably linked to Sembawang. His renewed fervour in exploring the site marks a return to his origin, with his portrayal of a phoenix in SEMBAWANG 深疤凰 representing in form and metaphor renewal, revival and his long, fraught search for home, the nexus of beginning and end.

This essay references artworks featured in Singapore Art Museum’s Learning Gallery, located in Gallery 2 at SAM. The Learning Gallery will be open until 29 June 2025. Click here to find out more.

Artist Bio

Tang Da Wu is widely regarded as a central figure in the alternative art scene in Singapore. In 1988, he led a group of young artists to establish The Artists Village, an art collective that spearheaded performance, installation and painting projects as well as exhibitions in public spaces. Since the 1990s, Tang’s artworks have dealt with the subjects of memory, history and the environment. He was featured in the Singapore Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and has since brought critical attention to the development of art in Singapore with works such as First Arts Council (2011) and Our Children (2012), which were collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and presented in an exhibition and performance at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2017. More recently, he led a two-part performance titled《为什么要走出黑暗》 (When Darkness Walk) by La Tristesse Opera, in memory of artists Chng Seok Tin, Lee Wen and Tan Kian Por and to commemorate the group’s tenth anniversary.

Author Bio

Dr Charmaine Toh is Senior Curator, International Art (Photography) at Tate. Her research focuses on alternative histories of photography and art in Southeast Asia. She was previously Senior Curator at National Gallery Singapore where she curated the exhibitions Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia (2022) and Tang Da Wu: Earthwork 1979 (2017). She is the author of Imagining Singapore: Pictorial Photography from the 1950s to the 1970s (Brill, 2023).

Endnotes
¹ For a more extended discussion of Earth Work, please see Charmaine Toh, ed., Earth Work 1979 (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2016).
² For example, see the essays in Kwok Kian Woon and Lee Wen (eds), The Artists Village: 20 Years On (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum 2009).
³ Kwok Kian Woon, “The Stakes in Contemporary Art: Tang Da Wu’s Artistic Practice as Exemplar,” Moving Worlds 10 (1), 2010, 74.
⁴ Payal Uttam, “80-year-old famed Singaporean artist Tang Da Wu on curiosity and being real with audiences as his latest solo exhibition opens” in South China Morning Post, 14 Aug. 2023. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3230753/80-year-old-famed-singaporean-artist-tang-da-wu-curiosity-and-being-real-audiences-his-latest-solo. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
⁵ Tang made a second and larger version of the phoenix for the Sembagraphie exhibition.
⁶ After Utopia (exhibition guide), (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2016), 37.
⁷ Uttam, op. cit.
⁸ TAV has lost its physical location, but the organisation still exists as a registered society. A new generation of artists are current members, and it continues to organise regular exhibitions. However, Tang and most of the original members are no longer part of it.
⁹ For a more extensive discussion of these works, see Charmaine Toh, “Going Home: Negotiating Identity in Tang Da Wu’s Art”, in Cultural Connections, Vol II, 2017, pp 58–63.
¹⁰ “Revisit Sembawang through the eyes of Tang Da Wu,” in The Straits Times, 19 Jul. 2023.