Our first lady of art : critiquing the memory of Georgette Chen
The National Gallery was launched in 2015 as part of Singapore’s sustained policy efforts to promote itself as a global city for the arts. Central to this cultural invigoration is Georgette Chen, a Nanyang Pioneer artist who contributed significantly to the development of the Nanyang Art style. D...
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| Format: | Final Year Project |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66261 |
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| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | The National Gallery was launched in 2015 as part of Singapore’s
sustained policy efforts to promote itself as a global city for the arts. Central to
this cultural invigoration is Georgette Chen, a Nanyang Pioneer artist who
contributed significantly to the development of the Nanyang Art style. Despite
having been out of public view for the past two decades since her death, the
memory of her has resurfaced, and her image has been widely proliferated as
part of the Gallery’s recent publicity efforts. However, one realizes that even
though she was revered by the state, the memory of her is gendered and
subsumed under a national narrative that sought to legitimize Singapore’s art
historical legacy. As such, this paper seeks to provide alternative propositions
to nuance the gendered stance proposed by Jane Chia, as well as to critically
examine the way in which the state and its state funded institutions might have
constructed Georgette’s legacy to serve nationalistic purposes. Lastly, the
paper will conclude with a reflection on how Georgette can be used as a case
study to examine how sparse scholarship on women artists, a lack of
consistency in writing, and limited platforms contributed to the truncated
historiography of art in Singapore. |
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