Margins: drawing pictures of home
21 Nov 2020 – 28 Mar 2021
School Programmes
Margins: drawing pictures of home
Margins: drawing pictures of home is a part ofArtScience at School
This programme is eligible for the National Arts Council’s Tote Board Arts Grant subsidy
This programme is eligible for the National Arts Council’s Tote Board Arts Grant subsidy
Margins: drawing pictures of home presents the work of 15 contemporary photographers who reflect on topics important to Singapore today, particularly urgent during these uncertain times.
Familiar and recognisable landscapes and people are subtly mediated through the photographic lens offering us deeper insights into our surroundings and current issues. These artistic responses eloquently articulate our rich and diverse migrant histories, our blended cultural ancestries, our everyday living conditions – imagining beyond the margins of our own lives and into the lives of others.
Some of the photographs presented in the exhibition encourage us to question our understanding of belonging, and to understand better the lives of those who have worked hard to make Singapore what it is today. Other images reflect on the mundane and sometimes eccentric humour to be found in the city-state while others transform the uncomfortable polluted air of the annual haze condition into a beautiful monochromatic installation.
This exhibition explores our hopes and dreams for Singapore and the stories that help us define the places we call home.
Margins: drawing pictures of home is part of the 7th edition of Singapore International Photography Festival.
Educational Resources
Curriculum Links
Dates & Times:
Thank you for your support, the exhibition is now closed. Virtual guided tour is available at ArtScience at School
Ticket Prices:
ArtScience at School $50/session (Limited time only)
Suitable for 7 years old and up
Recommended Maximum Group Size
ArtScience at School: 80 pax
Exhibition Sections
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Gardening the City
The “Garden City” vision was introduced by the late former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1967, as part of a strategic plan to transform Singapore into a tree-lined city of green spaces and parks. The 1975 Parks and Trees Act enhanced this vision with plans for trees and greenery becoming mandatory for build projects by government agencies and private developers.
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From Another Shore
Singapore is a nation of permanent immigrants and temporary foreign workers who all play crucial roles in the growing economy. The subjects explored across these photographs tell stories of the hardworking heroes who have played, and continue to play, an important part in the country’s evolving social, political and economic story.
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Documenting Reality
In Singapore’s race for progress, the struggles faced by individuals, both observed and mediated, help us make sense of the present. These photographs are reveries, suffused with personal anecdotes, satire, humour, and a sense of time passing.
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Our Island City-state
Singapore is a relatively young nation, existing in a state of in-betweenness, steeped in its own history. It is also future-focused, ambitious and resourceful. The country’s rapid urbanisation, for some, fuels a particular kind of nostalgia and these photographs encourage us to pause and contemplate our home’s changing shape and nature. What will home look like 20 years from now? How will our heartlands, tourist centres and transport systems evolve? Will our national character change too?
Explore the Exhibition
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AikBeng Chia
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Alecia Neo
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Ang Song Nian
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Charmaine Poh
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Chow and Lin
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Darren Soh
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Hu Qiren
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John Clang
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Kevin WY Lee
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Marvin Tang
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Nguan
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Sim Chi Yin
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Wilfred Lim
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Woong Soak Teng
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Zakaria Zainal
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AikBeng Chia
AikBeng Chia
4-
SingKarPor (2015 – 2020)
SingKarPor, is what Singapore sounds like when spoken in Hokkien dialect. Using a mobile phone and camera Chia captures earthy and candid portraits of Singaporeans, foregrounding visual puns and ludicrous moments of everyday life.
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Alecia Neo
Alecia Neo
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Home Visits (2009 – 2010)
Home Visits is a documentation of Queenstown neighbourhood’s residents and their homes. Neo asked to be invited into residents’ homes to capture these intimate portraits that give insights into the psyche and lives of this small, inter-connected community of Singaporeans.
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Ang Song Nian
Ang Song Nian
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Hanging Heavy On My Eyes (2016)
Throughout 2016 Ang Song Nian documented the daily Pollutant Standard Index in central Singapore, to observe the recurring haze caused by forest fires burning in Indonesia. Ang’s position is that our attempts to manipulate land and environment are a consequence of short-sighted agendas.
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Charmaine Poh
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Ma Jie (2016)
Ma Jies were a wave of female migrants, largely from China’s Guangdong province, who worked as domestic servants in Singaporean households from the 1930s to the 1960s. Poh documented several Ma Jies living out their twilight years in rental apartments in Singapore’s Chinatown.
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Chow and Lin
4-
The Poverty Line (2010 – 2020)
The Poverty Line examines the daily food choices of people living on the poverty line. The artists travelled 200,000 kilometres and visited 36 countries and territories spanning 6 continents to conduct this research. The country case studies use local poverty definitions to calculate an average meal per person per day.
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Darren Soh
4-
SS24 The Last Train (2011)
Senandung Sutera 24 (SS24) was the last passenger train service to depart Tanjong Pagar train station, Singapore for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Soh spent several months capturing the train’s nightly route in a series of apparition-like images – a tribute to the rail line’s long history and the connection it made between the two countries.
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Hu Qiren
4-
People Mountain People Sea (2013)
People Mountain People Sea is a direct translation of the Chinese idiom, 人山人海 that describes a huge crowd of people. The main character in this body of work, Old Master Q, a serialised comic book character is juxtaposed against Singapore tourist attractions, resulting in disparate scenes of awkward harmony.
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John Clang
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The Land of My Heart (2014)
The Land of My Heart casts the woman in sarong kebaya attire – as the protagonist in a portrait of Singapore’s past, present and future. The images contemplate different notions of a ‘Singaporean identity’ in the context of the country’s rapid development.
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Kevin WY Lee
Kevin WY Lee
4-
Suddenly the Grass Became Greener (2015)
In 1967, then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew declared his vision to turn Singapore into a Garden City. He established a successful large-scale tree planting program. Suddenly the Grass Became Greener documents this tribute to Lee’s legacy.
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Marvin Tang
Marvin Tang
4-
Stateland (2015)
Stateland documents small private garden plots and plantations that have been secretly created in Singapore’s state-owned forests. This instance of ‘guerrilla gardening’ questions strict policing of land use and speaks to a collective longing to escape from the concrete jungle back into the garden.
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Nguan
Nguan
4-
Singapore (2007 – 2020)
Peering behind the polished and extravagant facade of Singapore, Nguan reveals overlooked corners of the city and uncanny moments in the lives of ordinary Singaporeans. Singapore is a study of the nation’s grittier face and the alienation sometimes felt by city dwellers.
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Sim Chi Yin
Sim Chi Yin
4-
The Long Road Home: Journey of Migrant Indonesian Women (2003 – 2009)
Troubled by the high percentage of Indonesian domestic workers who fell from high-rise buildings in Singapore in the mid 1990s, Sim travelled to their home villages to investigate the migration process capturing their trails and travails, heartaches, and their bittersweet successes.
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Wilfred Lim
Wilfred Lim
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State of Solitary (2020)
State of Solitary is a series of photographs created during the Singapore circuit breaker period using food scraps, familiar domestic objects and wild flowers found by Lim during the sanctioned one-hour outdoor exercise period.
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Woong Soak Teng
Woong Soak Teng
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Ways to Tie Trees (2015 – 2017)
Woong’s portraits of uprooted and relocated trees in Singapore reveal the tightly controlled acts of urban planning that go into making the man-made garden city.
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Zakaria Zainal
Zakaria Zainal
4-
Our Gurkhas (2014)
Our Gurkhas is an anthology of portraits of retired Singapore Gurkhas. Each person photographed was asked to reflect on their lives in Singapore from the 1950s to the present day.
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Virtual Tour
Virtual Tour
Join Senior Museum Ambassador, Eileen, to learn about the overlooked margins between our external and internal selves, the fluidity and variety of a home and how real and imagined boundaries affect those on the other side of them.
Our Partners
Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF)
Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF) is a biennial gathering of minds from around the world with the common pursuit to advance the art and appreciation of photography. Launched in 2008, SIPF is the largest international photo festival in Southeast Asia—hosting some of the biggest names in photography, while uncovering new talents, and promoting the understanding of our society through creative photographic expressions. 7th SIPF 2020 will take place 5 November 2020 - 30 January 2021. Join us for a three-month presentation of exhibitions, online discussions and community participatory programmes.
SPACElogic
A one-stop solution provider that specialises in interior, permanent gallery and museum fit-out projects, SPACElogic has built a strong foundation of trust and an excellent track record to deliver high standard services. SPACElogic collaborates with experts from various disciplines to co-create spatial stories, integrating visual aesthetics with technology and functionality to craft out meaningful and engaging experiences for its customers. As thinkers and doers, SPACElogic thrives on ideas and solutions to create enthralling encounters in museums, commercial and artistic environments.
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