Woon Tien Wei/Performance Researchwa - lee wen 李文
Performance Research 6(l), pp.37 Taylor & Francis Ltd 2001
TANG Da Wu, Performance at The Artists Village, 1987, © Koh Nguang How
There is no official book on Performance Art in Singapore. A recent project, PAP or Performance Art Project has tried to create an archive documenting the growth of Singaporean performance art. One can find out more from KOH Nguang How, who holds the most consistent documentation on art from the 1980s to the present, but getting information on past performances is not easy and documentation is still scattered. My knowledge of performance in Singapore exists through my memories of stories told to me by others ‑ who most likely heard the story from someone else. It exists as word of mouth. It might sound strange to some, but as an artist I grew up listening to stories. One can almost detect the resemblance in this to folk tales in which stories get told, retold and perhaps adapted to make them more contemporary ‑ or more bearable.
Imagine. On a good day, there might be about 10‑15 people at two tables in a 'kopi shop’, everyone talking or eating something. Either way, the mouth moves and, as the table is round, conversations fly over to the opposite side ‑ or in whichever direction the conversation decides to go. There is no surprise about why most tables in Singapore kopi‑shops are round; I suspect the table is shaped to better effect the oral culture we have. Let me relate the time when I first heard about LEE Wen's yellow man series.
‘Oh you don't know the yellow man?’ he cries. ‘Well, Lee Wen paints himself yellow and wears only this yellow underwear and moves around the trees…’
It is only this summer that I manage to catch LEE Wen in Singapore and conduct this interview. LEE Wen is an artist from Singapore who has performed and exhibited in Japan ‑ where he spends most of his time ‑ as well as Thailand, Britain, India, Poland, Germany, Korea, Canada, Pakistan, Mexico and Cuba. Lee conceives most of his performances in series. Each performance/installation of Journey of a yellow man, Neo‑Baba and Ghost Stories could be seen as part of an ongoing artistic investigation. The Journey of a yellow man series has given him the nickname of 'yellow man'. This series was first performed in London (1992) and recently performed in Brisbane's Asia Pacific Triennial (1999). The Journey of a yellow man has been performed in different contexts: in the streets, in galleries and museums, and even at a conference. Each yellow man performance is a journey, metaphorical, spiritual and sometimes physical, and each journey explores a different theme according to its site‑specificity in time, place and culture.
Tien: Tell me how the Journey of a yellow man series began.
Lee Wen: I used to make paintings. Usually, I used yellow to colour the figure. In a way, I guess it was in my subconscious. Before I went to London, the last few paintings I made in Sembawang when I was staying with Da Wu were titled 'Where are you going yellow man?’ I then started the performance of theJourney of a yellow man series after living for 2 years in London. Prior to that I had started to work in performance art after being involved with the 'Artists Village'.
At the 'Artists Village', my work was made in response to the experimental tendencies involved when working with other member artists like TANG Da Wu, Vincent LEOW, ZAI Kuning and WONG Shih Yeow. There was a general pushing‑the‑limits kind of attitude in those days. When I went to London, I started to experience a different scene. I encountered a more aggressive alternative and underground art scene there and also got to see a lot more contemporary art stuff, which we only get to see in books and magazines in Singapore. I started to re-question what I was doing in terms of experimentation. I was doubtful about continuing performance as to its relevance to my identity as an Asian artist, Chinese by decent yet not quite Chinese in terms of personal history, speaking English as a first language, coming from an economically progressive, postcolonial society. I was also doing a lot of paintings in London and I was reading a lot at that time. I started to think comparatively about western and Chinese art history and researched self‑portraiture. When I tried to find early Chinese artists who painted realistic self‑portraits I couldn't find any. I found that the Chinese mastery of paintings was in landscape. I started to realize that a lot of these things are to do with the relationship with the philosophy of the time. When you think about the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, it was more of a very cosmic picture of man in the landscape. The human figure is always a small part of the whole cosmic universe. This is not to say which is better but it is just a different perception of man in the universe. On the other hand, in western art, they seem to put man in the center, which you can see in figurative or self‑portrait paintings. I tried to find self‑portraits by Chinese artists because you have Vincent Van Gogh or Rembrandt. And I wondered why the Chinese art has no equivalent. The earliest one I found was WANG Wei ‑ or maybe my research was not thorough enough. He did a portrait of himself but the portrait was of his back. I don't think it was meant to be a realistic portrait but it seems to be how the artist perceives himself in the work. And all this is somehow related to the philosophy of the culture. From this, I realized that there are in fact good enough reasons for me as for anyone to continue in performance. I organized some performances in the City of London Polytechnic with the sculpture and mixed media department. There I made the first of the Journey of a Yellow man series. The journey refers to the increasing incidence of travel, migration, and Diaspora of people. Yellow arises out of my questioning of the place of ethnicity and race in the make‑up of one's identity. Not only that but I must admit that, as a visual artist, in some ways I was conscious of the impact on a visual level of painting my whole body yellow. But as I continued making the performances in different spaces, situations, and countries, I found it an interesting mode of provocation. It made me want to do it, especially when I found myself in a strange new environment with different kinds of audiences.
Tien: How many parts are there to the yellow man series?
Lee Wen: The last one was no. 13 in Brisbane. But there were two, which were not done. I mean there was no no.8 and no no. 10.
Tien: Is there a theme running through the series?
Lee Wen: In a way, yes and no. I think I try to see it as a developing work. But I don't know when exactly it starts and when it ends. I cannot really say. It depends on the situation. I would try to make a piece reacting to the site or situation. It could be a one‑hour performance or a 5‑day performance. It depends.
Tien: The “yellow man” series reminded me of landscape painting because there is this element of you with a landscape or a cityscape. I find these performances very powerful as images. A man covered entirely in striking yellow negates this landscape ‑juxtaposing a familiar place like a green field and an unfamiliar figure. I am referring to Journey of a yellow man no. 2., Fire and Sun (1992). The photograph shows you in some green pastoral place, orange tone of sunrays and blue sky. It makes the whole landscape quite uncanny.
Lee Wen: That's part of the journey is it not? When you arrive in an unfamiliar place, your sensitivity is heightened. I don't mean to be uncanny. It is more to do with creating art. I was very much a surrealistic, expressionistic painter before. Of course I also make performances where I appear kind of 'normal', but we all do things a little on the edge of 'normality' in performance art. That is why I am skeptical of those performance artists that dismiss 'theatrical' performances. There is always a theatrical aspect, even in normal things you do, no matter how you blur the line between art and life. Once you put it out there as a work, as art. Mundanity to an extreme can become uncanny too.
Tien: True. Maybe you can tell me about this journey.
Lee Wen: On my way to Singapore from London, I stopped in India where there was a sculpture symposium. There I did my second yellow man performance. It was actually a stone sculpture symposium. I was there for 2 months and there were a lot of things, which were happening there, that made me feel like doing this performance. This resulted in“Journey of a yellow man no. 2: Fire and Sun”. We were about 2 kilometers away from the city carving stones. At that time (1992), there was a lot of racial violence between the Muslims and the Hindus because of this temple. In fact, the town that we were working in was also having riots. Sometimes, when we were working on our stone sculptures, we could even hear gunshots in the city. I was questioning what are we doing here? About 20 artists carving stone while people were fighting on the streets. It made me very uncomfortable about just making a piece of stone sculpture and that's why I decided to make this performance. The performance was made on Christmas Day and on that day all the artists were not working. It was a 4‑hour performance, and I timed it so that I would have the sunset as part of the performance at the end of it. The site of the symposium was surrounded by paddy fields. Every day at about 6.30 you could see this really beautiful sunset. A round red ball of a setting sun, and I had that as a backdrop. I tied ropes between two trees as I walked on the rope with the sunset behind me. It ended with me using some elements of fire. Is this too much detail?
Tien: I am not sure. Maybe, it's really up to me and the reader to use our imagination to picture this Indian Sun, I am also interested to know how the journeys begin to develop and engage/interact with issues beyond 'yellowness'? Issues like freedom (Journey no.5), desire (Journey no.3), multicultural‑ism (Journey no.11), and history (Journey no.6). For example, in “Journey of a yellow man no. 5: Index to Freedom” : I am already yellow. Why do I paint myself yellow? Yellow is the color of the sun, the moon the color of the river that runs in the old country. It is the spirit of nobility, the glow of precious gold.The warmth of abundance of harvest, the power and the faith in temple ... it is also the color of the persecuted and the oppressed'.
Your synopsis suggests what yellow could mean, in a way, freeing the'yellow man' to speak beyond 'yellow‑ issues'. At least, I felt that way, if yellow could symbolize many things. Must we still be oppressed by the color and can we not see beyond the color?
Lee Wen: Perhaps this came about because of my interest in comparative literature, and culture. When you hear people or the media talk about 'globalization', usually they mean it in an economic or political sense. I feel it is just as important to be aware of the cultural aspect too. I have often found similarities as well as differences in symbolic meanings in various different cultures. So for me to explore this in terms of the color yellow is an acknowledgement of the possibility in multiple meanings. I play around with it to keep it ambiguous. Too often we forget other possibilities besides what we are used to compared to a 'different' culture.
Tien: It is very interesting to hear about this experimental time in the Early Artists' Village days. I actually feel really excited when looking at the documentation of those performances and works. For example,'Serious Conversations’ (June1990, Singapore Arts Festival) ‑ the performance with TANG Da Wu, Vincent LEOW and yourself in Raffles Place. I think this time when you lived together in a village, there must be a lot of collaboration exchange between the artists, What kind and of role did the artists take in the public performances then? Or could you tell us more about this piece,'Serious Conversations'?
Lee Wen: Not all the artists actually stayed at the village. Membership was also very loose and casual. Some were more frequently there than others, although when we had an exhibition, participation could include 50 artists or so. As for collaborations and exchanges, there were 6 only a handful of 'regulars' who worked together. Da Wu gave quite a lot of talks with slides, sometimes comparing new international art with local artworks. We took the occasion to follow up with casual discussions after the talks. At that time, we all looked up to Da Wu, although he always denies it, as a kind of leading and more experienced artist. But our collaborations all were rather impromptu and casual, at least for me. I kind of just 'hit it off' quite naturally with Vincent and Da Wu in a spontaneous way. For the 'Serious Conversations' piece, we did not even plan it. Da Wu had been booked to do quite a lot of solo performances during that festival in 1990. He just casually asked Vincent and I to join in the performance after breakfast that same day and we happily agreed to it.
Tien: Where is the yellow man going after all these years? The first painting which gave birth to the yellow man (in a way) ‑'Where are you going yellow man?' and to look at that question again. Is the yellow man doomed to be journeying forever into eternity?
Lee Wen: I always say to myself, this is the last time I will make this performance. Then I face a situation, and I say 'Aha, this is going to be a yellow man" performance', so you never know. But I like to do other things too, because you only live once. The question 'Where are you going yellow man?' is not for me to answer. Actually I am asking you, and everyone this question. The work I do when posing questions does not mean I have the answers but to provoke thinking through art making.
NOTES
1 This project is still in progress and was initiated by Amanda HENG, Jason LIM and LEE Wen
All three are important performance and installation artists fromSingapore.
2 KOH Nguang How is an arthistorian and researcher in Singapore.
3 Kopi‑shop is colloquial for coffee shop. Unlike cafes, these coffee shops offer affordable coffee and food. Kopi‑shops are an equivalent to pubs in Britain.
4 As a latecomer to the art circle in Singapore, I had never seen any of the yellow man series and other famous performances.
5 Journey of a yellow man no. 11:Multiculturalism (September 1997),The Substation, as the yellow man participates as a panelist for the conference on 'Multiculturalism in Singapore'.
6 Sembawang is the name of an area in the northern part of Singapore.
7 TANG Da Wu, the founder of the Artists' Village (see note 8).
8 The Artists' Village is an art collective which started with artist TANG Da Wu who initiated studio spaces in a farm area. He invited artists to work and live in these studios. This was in the late 1980s and the Artists' Village is still operational today
9 WANG Wei, landscapes master from the Tang Dynasty.
10 The synopsis to “Journey of a yellow man no. 5: Index to Freedom” (16 October 1994, Fukuoka Art Museum).
Imagine. On a good day, there might be about 10‑15 people at two tables in a 'kopi shop’, everyone talking or eating something. Either way, the mouth moves and, as the table is round, conversations fly over to the opposite side ‑ or in whichever direction the conversation decides to go. There is no surprise about why most tables in Singapore kopi‑shops are round; I suspect the table is shaped to better effect the oral culture we have. Let me relate the time when I first heard about LEE Wen's yellow man series.
‘Oh you don't know the yellow man?’ he cries. ‘Well, Lee Wen paints himself yellow and wears only this yellow underwear and moves around the trees…’
It is only this summer that I manage to catch LEE Wen in Singapore and conduct this interview. LEE Wen is an artist from Singapore who has performed and exhibited in Japan ‑ where he spends most of his time ‑ as well as Thailand, Britain, India, Poland, Germany, Korea, Canada, Pakistan, Mexico and Cuba. Lee conceives most of his performances in series. Each performance/installation of Journey of a yellow man, Neo‑Baba and Ghost Stories could be seen as part of an ongoing artistic investigation. The Journey of a yellow man series has given him the nickname of 'yellow man'. This series was first performed in London (1992) and recently performed in Brisbane's Asia Pacific Triennial (1999). The Journey of a yellow man has been performed in different contexts: in the streets, in galleries and museums, and even at a conference. Each yellow man performance is a journey, metaphorical, spiritual and sometimes physical, and each journey explores a different theme according to its site‑specificity in time, place and culture.
Tien: Tell me how the Journey of a yellow man series began.
Lee Wen: I used to make paintings. Usually, I used yellow to colour the figure. In a way, I guess it was in my subconscious. Before I went to London, the last few paintings I made in Sembawang when I was staying with Da Wu were titled 'Where are you going yellow man?’ I then started the performance of theJourney of a yellow man series after living for 2 years in London. Prior to that I had started to work in performance art after being involved with the 'Artists Village'.
At the 'Artists Village', my work was made in response to the experimental tendencies involved when working with other member artists like TANG Da Wu, Vincent LEOW, ZAI Kuning and WONG Shih Yeow. There was a general pushing‑the‑limits kind of attitude in those days. When I went to London, I started to experience a different scene. I encountered a more aggressive alternative and underground art scene there and also got to see a lot more contemporary art stuff, which we only get to see in books and magazines in Singapore. I started to re-question what I was doing in terms of experimentation. I was doubtful about continuing performance as to its relevance to my identity as an Asian artist, Chinese by decent yet not quite Chinese in terms of personal history, speaking English as a first language, coming from an economically progressive, postcolonial society. I was also doing a lot of paintings in London and I was reading a lot at that time. I started to think comparatively about western and Chinese art history and researched self‑portraiture. When I tried to find early Chinese artists who painted realistic self‑portraits I couldn't find any. I found that the Chinese mastery of paintings was in landscape. I started to realize that a lot of these things are to do with the relationship with the philosophy of the time. When you think about the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, it was more of a very cosmic picture of man in the landscape. The human figure is always a small part of the whole cosmic universe. This is not to say which is better but it is just a different perception of man in the universe. On the other hand, in western art, they seem to put man in the center, which you can see in figurative or self‑portrait paintings. I tried to find self‑portraits by Chinese artists because you have Vincent Van Gogh or Rembrandt. And I wondered why the Chinese art has no equivalent. The earliest one I found was WANG Wei ‑ or maybe my research was not thorough enough. He did a portrait of himself but the portrait was of his back. I don't think it was meant to be a realistic portrait but it seems to be how the artist perceives himself in the work. And all this is somehow related to the philosophy of the culture. From this, I realized that there are in fact good enough reasons for me as for anyone to continue in performance. I organized some performances in the City of London Polytechnic with the sculpture and mixed media department. There I made the first of the Journey of a Yellow man series. The journey refers to the increasing incidence of travel, migration, and Diaspora of people. Yellow arises out of my questioning of the place of ethnicity and race in the make‑up of one's identity. Not only that but I must admit that, as a visual artist, in some ways I was conscious of the impact on a visual level of painting my whole body yellow. But as I continued making the performances in different spaces, situations, and countries, I found it an interesting mode of provocation. It made me want to do it, especially when I found myself in a strange new environment with different kinds of audiences.
Tien: How many parts are there to the yellow man series?
Lee Wen: The last one was no. 13 in Brisbane. But there were two, which were not done. I mean there was no no.8 and no no. 10.
Tien: Is there a theme running through the series?
Lee Wen: In a way, yes and no. I think I try to see it as a developing work. But I don't know when exactly it starts and when it ends. I cannot really say. It depends on the situation. I would try to make a piece reacting to the site or situation. It could be a one‑hour performance or a 5‑day performance. It depends.
Tien: The “yellow man” series reminded me of landscape painting because there is this element of you with a landscape or a cityscape. I find these performances very powerful as images. A man covered entirely in striking yellow negates this landscape ‑juxtaposing a familiar place like a green field and an unfamiliar figure. I am referring to Journey of a yellow man no. 2., Fire and Sun (1992). The photograph shows you in some green pastoral place, orange tone of sunrays and blue sky. It makes the whole landscape quite uncanny.
Lee Wen: That's part of the journey is it not? When you arrive in an unfamiliar place, your sensitivity is heightened. I don't mean to be uncanny. It is more to do with creating art. I was very much a surrealistic, expressionistic painter before. Of course I also make performances where I appear kind of 'normal', but we all do things a little on the edge of 'normality' in performance art. That is why I am skeptical of those performance artists that dismiss 'theatrical' performances. There is always a theatrical aspect, even in normal things you do, no matter how you blur the line between art and life. Once you put it out there as a work, as art. Mundanity to an extreme can become uncanny too.
Tien: True. Maybe you can tell me about this journey.
Lee Wen: On my way to Singapore from London, I stopped in India where there was a sculpture symposium. There I did my second yellow man performance. It was actually a stone sculpture symposium. I was there for 2 months and there were a lot of things, which were happening there, that made me feel like doing this performance. This resulted in“Journey of a yellow man no. 2: Fire and Sun”. We were about 2 kilometers away from the city carving stones. At that time (1992), there was a lot of racial violence between the Muslims and the Hindus because of this temple. In fact, the town that we were working in was also having riots. Sometimes, when we were working on our stone sculptures, we could even hear gunshots in the city. I was questioning what are we doing here? About 20 artists carving stone while people were fighting on the streets. It made me very uncomfortable about just making a piece of stone sculpture and that's why I decided to make this performance. The performance was made on Christmas Day and on that day all the artists were not working. It was a 4‑hour performance, and I timed it so that I would have the sunset as part of the performance at the end of it. The site of the symposium was surrounded by paddy fields. Every day at about 6.30 you could see this really beautiful sunset. A round red ball of a setting sun, and I had that as a backdrop. I tied ropes between two trees as I walked on the rope with the sunset behind me. It ended with me using some elements of fire. Is this too much detail?
Tien: I am not sure. Maybe, it's really up to me and the reader to use our imagination to picture this Indian Sun, I am also interested to know how the journeys begin to develop and engage/interact with issues beyond 'yellowness'? Issues like freedom (Journey no.5), desire (Journey no.3), multicultural‑ism (Journey no.11), and history (Journey no.6). For example, in “Journey of a yellow man no. 5: Index to Freedom” : I am already yellow. Why do I paint myself yellow? Yellow is the color of the sun, the moon the color of the river that runs in the old country. It is the spirit of nobility, the glow of precious gold.The warmth of abundance of harvest, the power and the faith in temple ... it is also the color of the persecuted and the oppressed'.
Your synopsis suggests what yellow could mean, in a way, freeing the'yellow man' to speak beyond 'yellow‑ issues'. At least, I felt that way, if yellow could symbolize many things. Must we still be oppressed by the color and can we not see beyond the color?
Lee Wen: Perhaps this came about because of my interest in comparative literature, and culture. When you hear people or the media talk about 'globalization', usually they mean it in an economic or political sense. I feel it is just as important to be aware of the cultural aspect too. I have often found similarities as well as differences in symbolic meanings in various different cultures. So for me to explore this in terms of the color yellow is an acknowledgement of the possibility in multiple meanings. I play around with it to keep it ambiguous. Too often we forget other possibilities besides what we are used to compared to a 'different' culture.
Tien: It is very interesting to hear about this experimental time in the Early Artists' Village days. I actually feel really excited when looking at the documentation of those performances and works. For example,'Serious Conversations’ (June1990, Singapore Arts Festival) ‑ the performance with TANG Da Wu, Vincent LEOW and yourself in Raffles Place. I think this time when you lived together in a village, there must be a lot of collaboration exchange between the artists, What kind and of role did the artists take in the public performances then? Or could you tell us more about this piece,'Serious Conversations'?
Lee Wen: Not all the artists actually stayed at the village. Membership was also very loose and casual. Some were more frequently there than others, although when we had an exhibition, participation could include 50 artists or so. As for collaborations and exchanges, there were 6 only a handful of 'regulars' who worked together. Da Wu gave quite a lot of talks with slides, sometimes comparing new international art with local artworks. We took the occasion to follow up with casual discussions after the talks. At that time, we all looked up to Da Wu, although he always denies it, as a kind of leading and more experienced artist. But our collaborations all were rather impromptu and casual, at least for me. I kind of just 'hit it off' quite naturally with Vincent and Da Wu in a spontaneous way. For the 'Serious Conversations' piece, we did not even plan it. Da Wu had been booked to do quite a lot of solo performances during that festival in 1990. He just casually asked Vincent and I to join in the performance after breakfast that same day and we happily agreed to it.
Tien: Where is the yellow man going after all these years? The first painting which gave birth to the yellow man (in a way) ‑'Where are you going yellow man?' and to look at that question again. Is the yellow man doomed to be journeying forever into eternity?
Lee Wen: I always say to myself, this is the last time I will make this performance. Then I face a situation, and I say 'Aha, this is going to be a yellow man" performance', so you never know. But I like to do other things too, because you only live once. The question 'Where are you going yellow man?' is not for me to answer. Actually I am asking you, and everyone this question. The work I do when posing questions does not mean I have the answers but to provoke thinking through art making.
NOTES
1 This project is still in progress and was initiated by Amanda HENG, Jason LIM and LEE Wen
All three are important performance and installation artists fromSingapore.
2 KOH Nguang How is an arthistorian and researcher in Singapore.
3 Kopi‑shop is colloquial for coffee shop. Unlike cafes, these coffee shops offer affordable coffee and food. Kopi‑shops are an equivalent to pubs in Britain.
4 As a latecomer to the art circle in Singapore, I had never seen any of the yellow man series and other famous performances.
5 Journey of a yellow man no. 11:Multiculturalism (September 1997),The Substation, as the yellow man participates as a panelist for the conference on 'Multiculturalism in Singapore'.
6 Sembawang is the name of an area in the northern part of Singapore.
7 TANG Da Wu, the founder of the Artists' Village (see note 8).
8 The Artists' Village is an art collective which started with artist TANG Da Wu who initiated studio spaces in a farm area. He invited artists to work and live in these studios. This was in the late 1980s and the Artists' Village is still operational today
9 WANG Wei, landscapes master from the Tang Dynasty.
10 The synopsis to “Journey of a yellow man no. 5: Index to Freedom” (16 October 1994, Fukuoka Art Museum).