SINGAPORE – Whenever 73-year-old Dana Lam wanted to dedicate time to her art, something else always beckoned – first journalism, then her two children. And when two opportunities to serve as president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) came up, she could not say no.
After six decades of art practice on the side, Lam will open her first solo exhibition Who Knows Where The Bird Goes at T:>Works’ 72-13 on July 22. She speaks to The Straits Times at her Goodman Arts Centre studio, which bears a cheeky handmade door sign admonishing: “Keep children on leash.”
“When I turned 60, I told myself I have to believe this is the last decade of my life. I cannot keep putting things aside,” she says.
Although creative from the time she was young, Lam has only in her senior years been able to forge the artistic life she craved – working on Still Life (2019) with Checkpoint Theatre, making the shortlist for the Singapore Literature Prize with her visual diary The Art Of Being A Grandmother (2022) and winning a silver award at the 2024 UOB Painting of the Year competition.
Lam gave much of her life to activism, so much so that her daughter once casually told her she could be considered a “negligent” parent.
Lam did not object and merely remarked how societal expectations of the self-sacrificing parent are what drive so many people today away from parenthood: “If you are going to meet these standards, it almost means you have no other life than being a parent. How does one do that consistently?”
A founding member of TheatreWorks (now T:>Works), Lam shares with some horror that her late renaissance has seen her do many strange things, like roll around on stage in a tank top and shorts for a dance production.
“I think I lost a few friends at the show. I’m just glad this time round, I don’t have to contort myself,” she says of her exhibition, which is commissioned as part of T:>Works’ The Agency Fest, an initiative supporting artists aged 60 and above.
The ever-experimenting Lam is trying her hand at frame-by-frame animation for the first time.
ST PHOTO: SARAH LEE
But the works she is developing for the exhibition, curated by Tan Siuli, are no less laborious.
The ever-experimenting Lam is trying her hand at frame-by-frame animation for the first time using a painstaking process inspired by South African artist William Kentridge. She calls herself a “late developer” and is not afraid to take her time with a process that involves no storyboarding. “Working on animation was almost like making myself slow down and do things bit by bit, staying with it instead of starting to run too soon and too fast.”
Lam is also presenting works made with charcoal. It was artist Jimmy Ong – whom she met through a mutual friend in the 1980s – who inspired her to work with nudes and charcoal.
A set of nine A4-size nudes by Ong inspired by the Kama Sutra hang in her bedroom, she laughs, saying of Ong with admiration: “It was from him that I discovered how a piece of charcoal can have intensity – some of his charcoal works feel almost like ink.”
Lam was inspired to pick up charcoal drawing by fellow artist Jimmy Ong’s work.
ST PHOTO: SARAH LEE
Lam was an impatient child and easily got envious of her classmates who were more talented at art. Before wanting to become an artist, she wanted to become a writer – spinning yarns in her head while she did the housework in the morning and jotting them down frantically at night, otherwise writing fan fiction for Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five series.
Her first newspaper mention was a 1977 New Nation report on her poetry recital headlined Poet Dana Thrills Them All.
While others looked up to towering figures like poet Edwin Thumboo, Lam cited less predictable heroes – poet and ST journalist Rebecca Chua and academic Geraldine Heng, who authored one collection of poetry Whitedreams (1976). But Lam blushes at being called a poet now, saying she grew up thinking it impossible to be an artist or a writer.
At 73, she still harbours an ambition of writing a novel – a dream delayed for decades. In her time as an ST journalist, she would sneak elements of florid novelistic prose into her news pieces only to get reprimanded.
She brings up all these disparate parts of her now to prove a point: “Preparing for this show has enabled me to see myself in some form of totality, which I never did before.”
At 73, Lam still harbours an ambition of writing a novel – a dream delayed for decades.
ST PHOTO: SARAH LEE
Under The Agency Fund Open Call 2026, grants of up to $10,000 will be disbursed to successful applications. The 2026 panel is made up of Cultural Medallion recipients who are aged 60 and above, namely T:>Works artistic director Ong Keng Sen, Singapore’s 2026 representative to the Venice Biennale Amanda Heng, jazz maestro Jeremy Monteiro, Booker Prize-longlisted writer Meira Chand and Malay dance pioneer Som Said.
Now that she has an aerial view of her artistic life, Lam feels like she is only starting to understand her life’s purpose.
“I’ve only just begun. It feels to me all my creative efforts up to now have been warm-ups,” says Lam, wondering aloud if she has meandered too much. “I have no idea why it should take so long for anyone to know themselves. What on earth happened in my life that I needed this?”
Book It/Who Knows Where The Bird Goes – Dana Lam: Six Decades Of Practice
Where: T:>Works, 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road
When: July 22 to Aug 8; noon to 8pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays); noon to 6pm (Sundays)
Admission: Free with registration; ticketed events involving performances, panels and a tour on July 25 and Aug 1 cost $100
Info: str.sg/vGBA