By Wei Xin Tan

[Image: ‘Tropical Rhapsody’ (1972)]

‘Tropical Rhapsody’, a sculpted mural of figurative forms intermingled with motifs of nature, is one of two tropical-themed murals by the artist Ng Eng Teng. Commissioned by the now defunct Garden Hotel in the 1970s, both of these murals – Asian Symphony and Tropical Rhapsody – were dismantled in 2010 before the demolition of the hotel and relocated to the National University Health System building and the NUS Museum respectively in a lengthy and complex process.

The two murals, now part of the museum’s extensive Ng Eng Teng Collection, speak of years of painstaking care and conservation, a process which has been documented and is now showcased along the museum’s Conservation Corridor.

As a public commission, it is paramount that this work is examined not just within Ng’s artistic oeuvre but also within the broader context of the time in which it was created. Made in 1972, the creation of this mural coincides with ongoing efforts to transform Singapore into a ‘Garden City’, offering an interpretative framework through we can read the artwork and its discursive context. [1]

This vision of Singapore as a ‘Garden City’, or more recently, a ‘City in a Garden’, is a familiar one that has its origins in the need to beautify Singapore’s physical landscape in the 1960s and 70s. At a time when industrialisation and urbanisation were moving at full speed, a comprehensive plan was announced by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew with the objective of transforming Singapore into a beautiful garden city filled with abundant flowers and trees.

This involved the implementation of tree-planting exercises, creation of new parks, and campaigns to boost green-consciousness among Singaporeans. Among other reasons, this vision was conceived with the intention of transforming Singapore into an attractive place for tourism. [2]

Of course, one can go further back in time to trace the imagery of Tropical Rhapsody in the works of early Nanyang artists. Adjacent to the Ng Eng Teng gallery is the exhibition tropics, a many (con)sequence, which examines the tropical imaginary through its visual tropes and aesthetics. Its central point of inquiry is Kent Chan’s film Seni, which re-imagines Ho Koe Hoe’s journey to Europe. Ho, then president of the Singapore Art Society, had brought the first exhibition of Singaporean art to the empire in 1955.

Alongside the film are several works from the NUS Museum’s collection, many of which project an aesthetic of tropical idyll in their depictions of river-scapes, fishing villages and kampung scenes. Through its examination of tropical representations and the role of the tropics in art history, the exhibition invites us to consider what it means for the tropics to be staged as an object of art and for Malayan identity to be mediated by colonial imaginings of the region.

Such an identity, rooted in the visual language of the tropics, remains enduring in the present. Today, Singapore can be considered the shining emblem of the Garden City. In the past decade, attractions such as Gardens by the Bay as well as the towering waterfall and lush greenery in Jewel Changi Airport have earned international recognition, building on this image of Singapore as a botanical haven.

Yet, as pointed out in the recently published Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene, the metaphor of the garden brings to mind an “image of a manicured lawn” [3], one that is carefully curated at a cosmetic level. Troubling as it is that such representations perpetuate the tropics as a site of colonial fantasy, they become even more problematic in today’s climate crisis when one considers the capitalist impulses and economic imperatives driving them.

Returning to Tropical Rhapsody, it is interesting to note that while many early Nanyang artists often work in the traditions of the picturesque and panorama by putting the focus on the landscape, Ng’s mural stays true to his practice of working with the figurative form.

Tropical Rhapsody depicts several female figures with rotund lower bodies characteristic of Ng Eng Teng’s figurative sculptures, overlapping with each other and covered with the motifs of flowers, butterflies and fish. Instead of vacating man from the idyllic landscape, Ng positions them within it, articulating an ideal image of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature.

In an interview, curator Kenneth Tay suggests that the “ambiguous merging of bodies and man with nature [in Tropical Rhapsody] could be read as a comment on the relationship between man, as well as between man and nature”. [4]

This ambiguity is perhaps indicative of Ng Eng Teng’s approach towards the human body, particularly when one considers the sculptures in the exhibition. The exhibition takes its title from Ng’s abstract geometric series 1+1=1, which consists of geometrical frames with jagged diagonal lines running across them.

These give the appearance of two interlocking profiles coming together to form a single unit. Meanwhile, Garden of Eden, said to be inspired by the Biblical figures Adam and Eve, is composed of two figures reaching towards each other and linked together to form a whole.

One thing that emerges from these artworks is the fact that Ng is interested in relationality as much as he is concerned with the human body itself. Through this ambiguous merging of human figures or profiles, he positions these entities not as discrete, self-contained and autonomous but intimately bound to others.

Indeed, the ways in which we are mutually constituted by a shared vulnerability is now perhaps even more pertinent in light of the ongoing pandemic as well as the climate crisis. This of course applies not only to human relationships but to the ecologies that demand our care.

For a long time, Singapore’s artistic and national identities have been imbricated in the tropical imaginary. Our relationship with the environment remains largely driven by the human-centric drive towards economic development, often at the cost of environmental destruction.

Taking into account the long tradition of depicting tropical landscapes in Singapore’s modern art history and the discourses that have shaped them, it is time to renew our understanding of the nation’s identity as a Garden City and reconceive our role within it in a way that truly recognises the interconnectedness between us and the natural world.

The exhibitions tropics, a many (con)sequence | A Solo Exhibition by Kent Chan, and Ng Eng Teng: 1+1=1 as well as its adjoining work of ‘Tropical Rhapsody’ at the Conservation Corridor are up for view at the third floor of the NUS Museum.

[1] Foo Su Ling, “A Mural in the New Nation,” in Working the Tropical Garden (NUS Museum, 2010).

[2] “Singapore to become beautiful, clean city within three years,” The Straits Times, May 12, 1967, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19670512-1.2.20.

[3] Bertrand Seah, “Another Garden City is Possible: A Plan for a Post-Carbon Singapore,” in Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene: Environmental Perspectives on Life in Singapore, ed. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson (Ethos Books, 2020).

[4] Huang Lijie, “New Show of Ng Eng Teng’s work at NUS Museum,” The Straits Times, Apr. 16. 2016, https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/new-show-of-ng-eng-tengs-work-at-nus-museum.