Singapore LGBT artists

The first Singaporean to come out nationwide as gay was artist Tan Peng, in a 1993 article in The Straits Times.

=Visual arts=

Teng Nee Cheong

 * Main article: Teng Nee Cheong

Born in 1951 and based in Singapore, the art of Teng Nee Cheong is known for its colour and exotica. The artist admits to being influenced by Asian mural paintings and Persian miniatures, especially the stylisation of botanic.

Teng studied at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore. His works have been exhibited in Holland, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Paris, Singapore and United States. He was bestowed the Ministry of Culture Special Award (1978), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Alumni Association Creative Award (1982), Singapore Art Society Tan Tze Chor Art Award (1991) and Phillip Morris Group (ASEAN, 1993/95/96). His works are among the collections of the National Museum Art Gallery ( Singapore), Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( Singapore) and Neka Museum ( Bali) and many of them have been sold at auction, including 'Scarlet Glory upon Midnight Blooms' sold at Christie's Hong Kong 'Asian 20th Century Art (Day Sale)' in 2014 for $35,468.

A book entitled, "Teng Nee Cheong: Those the Gods Love Grow Mightier", was written by Lindy Poh which offers a refreshing insight on the life, works and innermost thoughts of Teng that span a period of 40 years.

Teng passed away from nasopharyngeal carcinoma in 2013.

Ng Eng Teng

 * Main article: Ng Eng Teng

Tan Peng

 * Main article: Tan Peng

Tan Peng is an artist and the first Singaporean to come out as gay to the general public. In a statement to The Straits Times which published an article on 19 February 1993 about his joint exhibition with American artist and author John Goss entitled, "Flowing Forest, Burning Hearts", Tan wrote: “Being gay, as a viewer in art exhibitions, I am tired of drawing meaning from works which ignore my existence. At the same time, I feel a desire to serve the community - to do my bit to help comfort and heal a world ailing from prejudice, intolerance and hatred.” 

Jimmy Ong

 * Main article: Jimmy Ong

Martin Loh

 * Main article: Martin Loh

Ho Soon Yeen

 * Main article: Ho Soon Yeen

Ho Soon Yeen emerged in the Singapore art scene in 1992 with assemblage, installation and performance art, and a significant series of nude self-portrait gestural ink drawings, which were self-reflective and posed questions to the viewer on the social role of being a womyn. As a result of personal and work commitments, her involvement in the art scene was intermittent. A total hysterectomy made Ho re-assess her life and fall in love with it.

Brian Gothong Tan

 * Main article: Brian Gothong Tan

Otto Fong

 * Main article: Otto Fong

Aiman Hakim

 * Main article: Aiman Hakim

Tania De Rosario

 * Main article: Tania De Rosario

Lee Gwo Yinn

 * Main article: Lee Gwo Yinn

Kelvin Atmadibrata

 * Main article: Kelvin Atmadibrata

Toastwire

 * Main article: Toastwire

Charmaine Poh

 * Main article: Charmaine Poh

Charmaine Poh (born 1990) is a Chinese-Singaporean artist and writer based between Singapore and Berlin. She graduated from Tufts University with an B.A. in International Relations, and the Freie Universität Berlin with an M.A. in Visual and Media Anthropology. Her image-making practice employs ethnographic methods, focusing on issues of memory, gender, youth, and solitude in the Asian context. Often working with portraiture, she considers the performance of self and the layers of identity we build.

Poh is an internationally featured photographer who uses narrative portraiture to advocate for marginalized communities in Asia, from the LGBTQ community in Cambodia, to domestic workers in Singapore and low-income families along Myanmar's Yangon River. Her work on social inequalities has been featured by the New York Times, the International Center of Photography, Taipei Arts Festival, Straits Times, and M1 Fringe Festival. Poh also cofounded Clicking Together, an NGO in India that brings together youth from different socioeconomic classes through photography projects. In 2019, she was recognised as one of Forbes Asia 30 under 30 - The Arts.

Roy Tan

 * Main article: Roy Tan

Roy Tan dabbles in computer-generated art, especially 3D graphics, in his spare time.

=Performance art=

Josef Ng

 * Main article: Josef Ng

Loo Zi Han

 * Main article: Loo Zihan

Loo Zihan (罗子涵; Luō Zihán), born 11 November 1983, is an openly gay Singaporean actor, film director and dancer. He is a performance and moving-image artist and educator based in Singapore. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has had exhibitions and showings at NEXT / Art Chicago, Macau International Performance Art Festival, Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival (Chicago) and the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. His moving-image works have been screened in various film festivals including AFI Fest (Los Angeles), Pusan International Film Festival, Newfest (New York City) and Frameline (San Francisco). He is a part-time instructor at Nanyang Techonological University, School of the Arts and the National Institute of Education.

He has been open about both his own homosexuality and depicting gay themes in his films, despite the subject being particularly taboo in Southeast Asian society. His first film, Solos, was withdrawn from its début screening at the 20th Singapore International Film Festival due to its explicit depiction of homosexual sexAbout Zihan, on his official websiteSilencing Singapore.

Marla Bendini

 * Main article: Marla Bendini

Marla Bendini is a transgender performance artist, club personality, musician, pole and aerial artist based in Singapore. Her trans identity and practice are profoundly interrelated. She created her persona in 2007 as an amalgamation between art and life, to explore multiple liminal  identities  and  fluidity  in  perspectives. It was also to explore how the trans body allows one to occupy a new artistic space and challenge current understandings of identity.

She took on the name “Marla” after the female protagonist from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club when she was working on “Fight Club – A Chorus”, a 2007 live theatre production loosely based on the novel. Her multidisciplinary approach  towards  this  amalgamation  has  become  a  signature  form  of  hypervisibilty, using  the  existing  politicized  body  as  a  catalyst  and  vehicle  for  further  discourse. She seeks to  both  engage  and  disarm  audiences  and  to  bridge  the  present  to  what  she envisions to be an inevitable trans/post-human condition.

Vincent Chia

 * Main article: Vincent Chia

Vincent Chia graduated from LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts in 1998. He has worked with notable directors like Jean Ng, William Teo, Ang Gey Pin and Low Yuen Wei since 1996. Some of his performing credits include Theatre OX’s War Valley Tiger Dream, Asia-in-Theatre Research Centre’s Painted House (1999), The Necessary Stage's Exodus (1999), solo performance Die-bi An (2000), In Source Theatre’s The Road (2005) & Leaping Fish in the City (2013), as well as ECNAD's Frame 2 (1998) & Shall We Dance (2011).

=See also=


 * Singapore gay art

=References=
 * Artists listed and interviewed on Rainbow Arts Project:.
 * Teng Yen Hui, "Queering Perspectives in Singapore Art in the 1970s to 1990s: Subjectivity and Desire in Figuration", Master of Arts (M.A.) dissertation, Asian Art Histories, Lasalle College of the Arts, 2016 – 2017.

=Acknowledgements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.