{"id":597891,"date":"2026-08-19T08:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597891\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T08:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:10:11","slug":"overlooked-nanyang-artist-lai-foong-moi-gets-first-solo-exhibition-crossings-in-63-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597891\/","title":{"rendered":"Overlooked Nanyang artist Lai Foong Moi gets first solo exhibition Crossings in 63 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

SINGAPORE \u2013 Artists Georgette Chen<\/a> and Lai Foong Moi, both Paris-trained and influenced by the post-Impressionists, were the only two women teaching at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in the 1950s. Today, Chen has her place assured in the male-dominated canon of Nanyang art<\/a> while few recognise Lai\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

Crossings, the late Lai\u2019s first solo exhibition since 1963, casts a belated light on the overlooked Nanyang artist who was the first Malayan-born woman to hold solos in Malaya and Singapore, in 1959. Feted in her youth, the Seremban-born artist was even commissioned in 1960 to paint a portrait of Sharifah Rodziah, the wife of Malaysia\u2019s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. The work is on show at the National Gallery Singapore till Oct 3, 2027.<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s curator, Teo Hui Min, who became interested in the pioneer artist\u2019s unwritten story after encountering a painting of hers in 2018, says the reasons for Lai\u2019s fading from the canon are rife with speculation. She points to Lai\u2019s liminal place in the 1960s, saying: \u201cHaving been born in Malaysia and then spending most of her life in Singapore, there becomes this tension when ideas of the nation become very bounded. It was quite difficult to make room for these nuances in terms of identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in 1931, Lai went on to teach at her alma mater, NAFA, from 1959 to 1995, the year she died. Needing to balance her identities as artist and educator, she focused her energies on her students, including Tan Choh Tee, Salleh Japar, Boo Sze Yang and the late Khoo Sui Hoe<\/a>. In Teo\u2019s interviews with Lai\u2019s students, they recall a self-effacing educator who encouraged individual expression and imposed little of her own artistic life \u2013 unlike, say, her contemporary Cheong Soo Pieng, famously an interventionist who had few qualms about altering his students\u2019 works.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cTalking<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s curator, Teo Hui Min, who became interested in the pioneer artist\u2019s unwritten story after encountering a painting of hers in 2018.<\/p>\n

ST PHOTO: GIN TAY<\/p>\n

\u201cTalking to some of her students, overwhelmingly, they agree that her legacy was in teaching,\u201d says Teo, which might be a reason Lai\u2019s art took a back seat. After 1963, Lai showed only sporadically in group exhibitions \u2013 while her colleague Chen was consciously circulating, tapping networks and influential connections.<\/p>\n

There are currently 12 of Lai\u2019s works in the national collection. Teo estimates that the artist completed about 100 works in her lifetime, including the 25 on show in Crossings.<\/p>\n

In Crossings, situated in the flexible Dalam project space within the permanent art history exhibition Singapore Stories<\/a>, Teo includes still lifes from Lai\u2019s NAFA days and nudes from the artist\u2019s time at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts on a French government scholarship. What stands out in Teo\u2019s selection is a ravishing bouquet of Lai\u2019s portraits, largely of women wearing various modish kebaya and frilly Western styles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it demonstrates a very sharp awareness of the choices that were increasingly available to women in terms of how they could fashion and present themselves,\u201d says Teo. Lai herself was fond of the figure-hugging cheongsam, which was considered professional wear in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Her urban scenes and labourer portraits, too, stand out for their disavowal of heroic tropes \u2013 she painted a samsui woman and a coolie at rest<\/a> in Labourer (Lunch Break) (1965), which showed at the 2024 Venice Biennale<\/a>. Says Teo: \u201cUnlike many of her contemporaries who were painting scenes of a bustling Singapore River, a busy Chinatown or a growing business district, Lai was taking a slightly more quiet, introspective approach towards her depictions of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u201cLai<\/p>\n

This small exhibition gives more heft to the person behind the art and argues for a bigger place for Lai Foong Moi in Singapore\u2019s art history.<\/p>\n

ST PHOTO: GIN TAY<\/p>\n

While Lai\u2019s name has been included in key exhibitions and articles on the Nanyang art movement, this small exhibition gives more heft to the person behind the art and argues for a bigger place for her in Singapore\u2019s art history. Teo hopes this solo can spur further research into Lai\u2019s legacy, which she says offers a different model of artistic success. More research, she says, needs to be poured into learning more about Lai\u2019s time in Paris and Europe, and looking into the paintings she did overseas in the region as part of the Ten Men Group.<\/p>\n

Alas, little is certain about what Lai herself thought about her aesthetics or pedagogy as she did not leave any writing behind, nor does she have a formal estate. Much of Teo\u2019s attempts to uncover the psyche of the artist had to be inferred from the clues she left in her paintings. With nary a self-portrait in the show, Teo instead reads Lai\u2019s subjectless 1968 still life as her artistic self-portrait, referencing Chinese and Grecian ceramics and art magazines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are these little traces that are left behind. But I think that kind of personal dimension, you know, may always be a mystery,\u201d says Teo.<\/p>\n

Book It\/Lai Foong Moi: Crossings<\/p>\n

Where: City Hall Wing, Level 2, DBS Singapore Gallery, National Gallery Singapore, 1 St Andrew\u2019s Road
When: Till Oct 3, 2027
Admission: General admission ticket required; free for Singaporeans and permanent residents and $20 for other nationalities
Info: www.nationalgallery.sg\/sg\/en\/exhibitions\/Lai-Foong-Moi-Crossings.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SINGAPORE \u2013 Artists Georgette Chen and Lai Foong Moi, both Paris-trained and influenced by the post-Impressionists, were the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-597891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}