Where considerations of paintings by first-generation Nanyang artists are concerned, there has always been an overt tendency to prioritise their formal, stylistic and aesthetic qualities over socio-historical context. These works have been eulogized for their supposed merging of Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions till this day. When historical context does make an appearance, it functions as mere backdrop to artistic production and often takes the form of a chronology of dates allowing the artists’ background, aesthetic training, and any changes to their aesthetic styles to be charted. All the while, critical and at times problematic connections between the works and the conditions that prevailed around the period of their production were seldom made.^[1] One need not look hard to see that these Nanyang works rely very heavily on signifiers — representations of native bodies, with all the markings associated with them — as subject matter to convey a distinct regional identity. Central to all these works is the notion of identity, that of the migrant Chinese artists’ and their native subjects’, and the issue of representation. The complexities that surround both concepts hint at an interplay of multiplehistories and hence the need to shift away from an iconographic reading of these works. At the same time, given that an artwork does not simply illustrate ideology but is itself constitutive of ideology in that it actively produces meaning, it would be useful to look at the “process” behind the work: what is being done with the image and what it is doing for its users. This essay is an attempt at examining that very “process” in Cheong Soo Pieng’s “Malay Boy with Bird”.

The work “Malay Boy with Bird”, created in 1953, depict the figure of a Malay boy holding an empty bird cage. Clad in a red t-shirt with a ‘songkok’ on his head, the Malay boy is naked from the waist down. However, as he has his back towards us viewers, his male genitals are hidden from our view. What is prominently visible instead is his bare round bottom. A bird perched on the boy’s left shoulder holds his attention while another rests on the rung of a ladder. A partially hidden coconut tree can be seen in the background.

The painting is replete with signs that both locate the place and identify the race of the subject. The ‘songkok’ worn by the Malay boy, for instance, identifies him as a Malay Muslim person, and this aspect of his identity (race and religion) ties his body down to a rural landscape of the kampung, with the other supporting rural marker being the coconut tree in the background.^[2] The bird cage in the painting references the activity of bird rearing which was a popular male pursuit.^[3] The work carries with it the hallmark of the Nanyang style which is essentially the confluence of Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions. In the work, the Eastern aspect of the confluence can be seen in the depiction of local subject matter through the figure of the Malay boy alongside other accompanying local markers, while the use of oil paint on board points to the work’s Western aesthetic influence. At the same time, the visible brush strokes, the bold, black outlines and vibrant, contrasting colours point to the artist’s affinity with the avant garde.^[4]

Yet, even bearing all of the above technicalities in mind, there are aspects of the work that are simply confronting and make for a strange visual experience. The blue of the boy’s skin is a disconcerting element. While it does make the figure stand out amidst the sea of green, yellow and red, the subject still comes across as strange and alien because of it.

Cheong Soo Pieng had in fact applied the same stylistic consideration of using vibrant and unnatural colours on the skin of some of the native women he painted too.^[5] While nothing screams ‘avant garde’ as loud as the imposition of the modern onto the primitive, the pairing of unnatural colours with the native body, has the visual effect of making the sitters and the work look particularly exotic.

The unnatural colour of the skin on the boy’s bare and visible posterior also makes his semi-naked condition the most eye-catching aspect of the painting — the blue hue of the posterior, even when juxtaposed right next to the brilliant red of the boy’s t-shirt does not make it any less prominent. On the one hand, it can be said that the boy’s bare bottom clues us in on his lower class background, but it also insinuates his backwardness.^[6] The strange manner in which he is represented raises the questions of what is real and what is constructed in the work and more importantly it demonstrates that although the artist may not have control over how the work is perceived by viewers, he has control over what he chose to portray and how he chose to portray his subjects.^[7] Proponents of the Nanyang style see these artists’ Western art training as anchoring their artistic practice and ideologies to modernism. This, alongside the claim of them being one with the Southeast Asian region negate any possibility of these artists misrepresenting their native subjects and even came to symbolize multiculturalism in Singapore.^[8]

This artist-as-hero complex denies the artists’ shifting identities as Chinese migrants which became compounded during the 50s and 60s when open assertions of attachment to China became politically suspect.

The fact remains that these artists’ formative years were in fact spent in China. Cheong Soo Pieng, the artist behind “Malay Boy with Bird” relocated to Singapore only in 1946 after a brief stint in Hong Kong.^[9] When exactly he became localized and felt Malayan or Singaporean is anybody’s guess, the point here being that his outlook towards the region and its natives would have in one way or another been shaped by some, if not all of the prevailing Chinese ideologies that he grew up with.^[10] The most significant of these ideologies was the minority/majority discourse in which the politics of difference comes into play in forming one’s identity.^[11] In other words, the artist’s identity only becomes apparent next to a non-Chinese. The strangeness and differences seen on the Malay boy is essentially about how his backwardness and primitivity show up the artist’s modernity and civility.^[12]

As far as genres go, representations of the native male body in Nanyang paintings are less common than those of native women. This has a lot to do with the popularity of and hence demand for portrayals of native female body by the patrons at the time who were comprised of the expatriate community and the local elites of Malayan society. The male subject in “Malay Boy with Bird” is unique as he is also not an adult, but a child. However, in aesthetic conventions, children occupy feminine spaces due to their inability to participate fully in society because of their young age, and hence dependent on the mother figure.

Even though the boy in this work is not portrayed with a mother figure^[13], his pose: back turned with his posterior visible to viewers highlights the ‘absence’ of the penis, the marker of male masculinity and power. This lack can be read as a form of disempowerment, because it rendered him as a passive subject closer to the feminine than to the masculine. In addition, the Malay culture has long been feminized for its supposed association with undesirable traits like thriftlessness and the hatred of hard work, as opposed to Chinese traits which was “credited with the masculine spirit of enterprise, industry and frugality”.^[14] As masculinity is ideologically positioned in opposition to femininity, this places the Malay boy in an inferior position to Cheong Soo Pieng’s powerful one as the Chinese male artist who also controls the former’s representation, and is reflective of the hierarchal systems of gender relations in which subordinate masculinities, as exemplified by the figure of the Malay boy who despite being male, is relegated to the bottom of the gender hierarchy. ^[15]

The manner in which the Malay boy is depicted shows how dangerous representations can be on some levels, as it entails the loss of immediacy on the part of the sitters who are often represented by others and for others. That the Malay boy has no say over his representation also demonstrates the unequal balance of power between the artist and his subject. The problematics of representation while universal, become especially pronounced in the Nanyang works when they are considered in light of the artists’ evolving identity at the time and the politics of the period under which the work was created. Essentially, “Malay Boy with Bird” calls attention to differences between the migrant Chinese artist and his native subject. The Malay boy, by virtue of his skin colour, his ‘songkok’, his rural setting, his semi-naked state, and the absence of his penis, is endowed with subordinate status within the hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity. His body with all its primitive markers becomes the site through which Cheong Soo Pieng negotiates, reconstructs and stabilizes his evolving Chinese identity.

[1] Kevin Chua brilliantly criticizes this watered-down practice of art history in Singapore. Kevin Chua, “When was Modernism? A Historiography of Singapore Art”, Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, eds Low Sze Wee and Patrick D. Flores (Singapore: National Gallery of Singapore, 2017), 22-23.

[2] In nearly every one of these Nanyang works that features the native body, the native figure is tied to either the kampung and agrarian life or the boat and a seafaring life.

[3] The birdcage and its reference to the activity of bird rearing has been mentioned by at least one art writer of Cheong Soo Pieng’s works to be a “common sight in rural Malay homes”, thereby framing the exclusivity of the activity to a particular community — the Malay community. However, my research has revealed the activity of bird rearing to not be exceptional to the Malay community alone. It has been an activity that cut across communities and class since the 19th century. Due to this, I prefer to see the bird cage more as a marker of gender rather than of race. See also Neo Pei En Phedra, “Songbird Rearing: Community and Tradition”, Muse SG, No. 41, Vol 13, Issue 1, eds Norsaleen Salleh,  Stefanie Tham, Nicholas Yeo, (Singapore: National Heritage Board), 31.

[4] Cheong Soo Pieng received training in Western art in China.

[5] Look to the following works by Cheong Soo Pieng to make the comparison: ‘Dancers’, oil on canvas, c. 1953; ‘Iban Girls’, oil on canvas, 1953; ‘Bali Girls’, oil on canvas, 1954.

[6] For the purpose of comparison, another painting with the visible posterior of a male child that springs to mind is Tay Kok Wee’s ‘Picking’, that is on display in National Gallery of Singapore. A Chinese toddler with his back towards the viewers and his bare posterior peeking out from under his t-shirt is depicted among the bystanders to themain scene. The bare bottom of the Chinese toddler is clearly an indicator of his lower-class status — the work is a social realist work highlighting the plight of the working class. However, his younger age compared to the older-looking Malay boy and the fact that the Chinese toddler forms part of the background as opposed to the Malay boy the central subject of Cheong Soo Pieng’s painting makes the latter’s manner of representing the Malay boy even more bewildering.

[7] In my MA thesis, I gave evidence that the 4 pioneer Nanyang artists (Liu Kang, Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi) has taken liberties with their portrayal of Baliness women so as to reconstruct the women’s image in order to fit the popular stereotype. See Noorshidah Ibrahim, The Chinese Male Gaze and representation of Balinese Women in the Works of Liu Kang, Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi, (MA Thesis, Lasalle College of Arts, 2018), 19-20.

[8] The Nanyang artists’ words were always taken at face value and they were never thoroughly questioned. See Kevin Chua, “When was Modernism? A Historiography of Singapore Art”, in Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, Eds Low Sze Wee and Patrick D. Flores, Singapore: National Gallery of Singapore, 2017, pp 22-34. For these artists’ claims to being one with the region, see T. K. Sabapathy, “Bali, Almost Re-visited,” in Reminiscence of Singapore’s Pioneer Art Masters: Liu Kang, Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi (Singapore: Singapore Mint, 1994), unpaginated.

[9] The ultimate dream of the majority within the general migrant community then was to return to the land of their origin. See Lee Su Yin, British Policy and the Chinese in
Singapore, 1939 to 1955, The Public Service Career of Tan Chin Tuan (Singapore: Talisman Publishing Pte Ltd, 2011).

[10] Trying to determine when localization takes place among migrants is a futile exercise given the complexity of identity. Some scholars have pointed out that while localization do generally proceed from one generation to the next, change is not necessarily linear. See Shelly Chan, “The Case for Diaspore: A Temporal Approach to the Chinese Experience”, in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 74, No. 1 (February 2015), 120-121.

[11] Dru C. Gladney is among a group of academics who turn to Critical Race Theory and Whiteness Studies for methodological and theoretical guidance in approaching the question of Han identity. Relying on certain concepts, this group of scholars have shown that to the Han their self-conceptualization becomes apparent in their mind only in relation to a non-Han. This becomes highly relevant when considering the question of identity among the Nanyang artists. See Dru C. Gladney, “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority / Minority Identities”, in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 53, No 1. (February 1994), 93.

[12] In my MA thesis, I suggest that the native bodies, through their primitive markers and difference, become a site for these migrant Chinese artists to stabilize their evolving identity. See Noorshidah Ibrahim, The Chinese Male Gaze and representation of Balinese Women in the Works of Liu Kang, Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi, (MA Thesis, Lasalle College of Arts, 2018), 19-20.

[13] Sherry B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?”, in Woman, Culture, and Society, eds M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), pp 76-77.

[14] Shelly Chan, “The Case for Diaspore: A Temporal Approach to the Chinese Experience”, in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 74, No. 1 (February 2015), 119.

[15] Narayanan Ganapathy and Lavanya Balachandran, “Racialized masculinities: A Gendered Response to Marginalization among Malay Boys in Singapore”, in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Vol. 52, no. 1 (2019): 95.

Noorshidah Ibrahim is a visual art educator and freelance art writer who periodically contributes to local and international digital art magazines. Her current research interest revolves around the notion of identity in pre- and post- independence art of Singapore and Malaysia.