Identity & Politics - lee wen 李文

               One of the anxieties I faced of being a Chinese Singaporean in London was that of often being mistaken for being from mainland China. Even mainland Chinese would usually expect me to be well versed in Mandarind language and knowledge of Chinese culture. Although I am familiar with thelanguage and culture still they would frown on my lesser capacity and competence. At the same time, being first time away for a longer period than before, there is a greater sensitivity of prevalent racism when living in a predominantly “white” society. To the West, “the other” is often seen not only as exotic, erotic or primitive but also inferior and subject to colonization. Edward Said’s evaluation of “Orientalism” is seen by many to be the founding work on postcolonial theory.62 His writings have made us more aware of the perceptive bias of the West towards the East. Said was critical of what he found as various false assumptions by Western attitudes towards the East. Societies like Singapore having undergone colonialism face the dilemmas of developing national identity after colonial rule. The self-image of the colonized is that of an abject, subordinated people used by the colonizers. Postcolonial societies struggle in grappling with a binary opposition between the subordinated inferior Oriental and the ruling superior Westerner. The postcolony however is chaotic and pluralistic but has its own internal coherence.  There is a need to continue to investigate and engage with contemporary realities and to open up various questions of representations of postcolonial identity. In the search for a visual image as a starting point to explore this issue. I found the most stereotypical image of the “Asian” in the history of biology.

The Swedish scientist and botanist, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) is said to be the father of taxonomy, the scientific classifications of animals and plants now used in biological sciences. He even made some differentiations among the human race in four categories. These included Native Americans (Homo Sapiens Americanus) were seen as "red," "ill-tempered" and "subjugated." The "European" category (Homo Sapiens europeaeus) was "white, serious and strong." The Asiatic (Homo sapiens asiaticus) is described as “yellow, melancholy, and greedy” lastly the African (Homo sapiens afericanus) was depicted as "black, impassive and lazy." These categories are explicitly racist stereotypical perceptions, which even today helped scientists to categorize and interpret with these observations.  These contexts along with earlier explorations on identity, helped to initiate my series of “Journey of a yellow man”. Painting the body yellow alluded to various issues on my ethnicity and was also like putting on a full body mask. When working at the Artists Village and Tang Da Wu, we talked about putting the Chinese opera white powder on the face as a mask to signify embodying another persona in performance. The mask also helps to overcome our shyness of revealing ourselves as well as anxieties of stage fright when stepping in front of an audience. Etymologically, “mask” originated from the Italian “masca”, which describes an evil, hideous character. The Latin form of “persona” also implied a mask as in a role or a person. 65 The yellow man persona was an over the top mask which wishes to address various issues at the same time projecting a visually strong image. It accentuates my difference as an Asian “other” and at the same time ruptures the stereotypical perceptions of identity and renders an entirely different gaze.