Patrick Comerford
There was a time when street art in many countries was done in secret, illegally, and often hurriedly. But it has come into its own in recent years, and street art has been embraced as part of the culture of many towns and cities I know.
As a city, Singapore has embraced the culture of street art in recent years with enthusiasm, commissioning and creating beautiful works that tell the story of the city and its people.
Today, street art and colourful murals can be seen in many areas in Singapore, particularly in the popular tourist area of Chinatown, which I enjoyed during exploring during our short visit last month.
Several new murals have been approved and commissioned in Chinatown in recent years, and the majority of them seem to be by Yip Yew Chong.
Yip Yew Chong is an artist best known for his nostalgic murals depicting the culture of Singapore, both past and present. His murals and street art can be seen on walls and gable ends throughout Chinatown and in neighbourhoods like Tiong Bahru and Everton Road.
He was born in Singapore in 1969, and grew up in Chinatown, where he spent his childhood days until 1983. His family was one of five tenants co-living in a two-storey shophouse in Sago Lane. Families like these shared long wooden double-decker beds or lived in compartments in the long hall.
His family rented the floor from Arabs who owned many of the Chinatown shophouses. He recalls how the tenants sometimes squabbled but always cared for one another like a big family.
Yip Yew Chong is a self-taught artist who started painting murals as a hobby in 2015 while he was working as an accountant. His first mural was at Everton Road, near where he lives, and he worked on his street art on a part-time basis, for the next two or three years, painting murals in Chinatown.
He left the finance sector and became a full-time artist in in mid-2018, and since then he has painted over 50 murals throughout Singapore.
He has fond memories of the area and draws his inspiration from his childhood and everyday life experiences, telling those stories on walls and canvases. His other visual mediums include sketches, installations, digital drawing, photography and video-making.
His works are intricately detailed, often drawing on his childhood memories and telling stories a bygone era and lost places. At times, they are mixed with present-day real scenes in a whimsical manner.
His first mural on the streets of Chinatown in Singapore is the ‘Mid-Autumn Festival’ at the back alley of 83 Pagoda Street, behind Lucky Chinatown. This colourful mural was influenced by Yip Yew Chong’s childhood days in this area. The festive elements in this scene include lanterns and mooncakes.
His ‘Letter Writer’, a mural in Chinatown, is the first mural he painted with his two children. Tourists and local people alike enjoy posing for photographs at this mural at 336 Smith Street, on the side wall of New Bridge Centre, outside the CK department store.
In the past, letter writers played an important role in helping migrants write letters to their loved ones back in China. The letters often conveyed feelings of homesickness and loneliness. The letter writers also doubled as calligraphers for Chinese New Year couplets and ancestral altars. It was a common scene in Chinatown until the 1980s before the big Chinatown clean-up when the street markets, hawkers and traditional traders were resettled in the Chinatown Complex in 1983.
Painting the ‘Letter Writer’ was part of a bigger dream to paint six murals in Chinatown – the ‘Letter Writer’, the ‘Wooden Clog Maker’, the ‘Cantonese Opera Stage’, the ‘Chinatown Wet Market’, the ‘Paper Mask and Puppet Seller’, and the ‘Lantern Festival’.
Yip Yew Chong has painted a series of murals on Mohamed Ali Lane that include the ‘Window’, the ‘Lion Dance Head Maker’, the ‘Mamak store’ and the ‘Paper Mask and Puppet Seller’, all at one building.
‘The Window’ depicts the Kadir family, who ran the ‘Abdul Kadir Mamak shop’, and the Lee family of the ‘Lion Dance Head Maker Shop’, two shops depicted in separate murals.
‘The Window’ gives a glimpse into how different tenant families, regardless of ethnicity, language or religion, once lived together in the same shophouse.
It was a typical scene in Chinatown’s post-war shophouses, and the families seem to be lowering a basked to the two shops below.
Below the ‘Window’, Yip Yew Chong’s mural of the ‘Lion Dance Head Maker Shop’ is based on an actual shop that he remembers standing at No 3 Ann Siang Hill until the 1980s.
Next to the Yip Yew Chong mural of Abdul Kadir’s ‘Mamak Store’, next to the ‘Lion Dance Head Maker Shop’, is based on the artist’s memories of Abdul Kadir’s shop in Sago Lane.
When Sago Lane was demolished in 1984, Abdul Kadir moved his stall into the Chinatown complex. He continued to run his business for almost another three decades before returning to India.
Nearby, the ‘Paper Mask and Puppet Seller’ is the third mural in his series, ‘Dreams of Chinatown’. It is on the side wall of a house at the corner of South Bridge Road and Mohamed Ali Lane in Chinatown.
The colourful cart selling traditional paper masks and puppets was seen throughout Chinatown in the 1980s.
Yeo Ban Kok handcrafted the paper faces and peddled them all over Chinatown for a living. He welcomed tourists who photographed him but would not take any tips.
The ‘Cantonese Opera’ in Chinatown is a mural he first dreamt of painting in September 2015 as a gift to Chinatown. He remembers how as a little boy he followed his aunt to watch Cantonese Operas all around Chinatown, and he has fond memories of the dazzling costumes, the realistic backdrops and props, and acrobatic fighting, all of which inspired the style of his art.
But it took him three years to discover, navigate and connect with the right stakeholders in Chinatown before the painting could start. He painted the mural over 10 very hot and wet days in April 2019 as a fundraising event for local charities.
His intricate details in the mural include the costumes, the backstage activities, the postures and expressions of the audience, and the mobile food stalls.
Many other artists have also been encouraged and commissioned to contribute to the collection of street art and murals in Singapore, particularly in Chinatown.
Two golden dragons with children riding on their backs can be seen on the side of a two-storey building on Upper Cross Street. They were created by the Lithuanian-born artist Ernest ‘Zach’ Zacharevic, who combines fine art techniques with a passion for creating art outdoors.
Belinda Low has painted street murals and indoor wall art in more than 100 locations in Singapore since 2013. She started painting as a hobby in late 2011and describes her style as ‘post impressionistic, expressionistic and sometimes veering toward realism.’ She uses bold colours and strong brushstrokes showing intense emotions.
She has exhibited in Singapore, Barcelona, Zurich, Basel, Miami and Kalamatas, and her work is in collections in the UK, Australia, Switzerland, Sweden and the US.
