Group Director (Museums), National Heritage Board, Singapore
Nanyang Art: A Case Study of Multi-culturalism at Work in Singapore
As a young city-state shaped by waves of migration, Singapore is often cited as a model of multiculturalism. At its basic, “multi-cultural” refers to the coexistence of diverse ethnic communities and cultural traditions within a shared space. Despite this diversity, it is not a given that cross-cultural interactions will naturally occur, nor that such interactions will give rise to intercultural outcomes.
Nanyang art, often celebrated as Singapore’s first localised art movement, stands as a powerful symbol of inter-cultural synthesis, the outcome of life in multi-cultural Singapore. Emerging in the 1950s and 1960s amid colonial transition and early nation-building, local artists, many of whom were migrant artists, sought to imbue their creative outputs with a multi-cultural identity. This was especially evident in the “fusion” paintings, variously known at the time as Malayan or Nanyang art. Its emergence was the outcome of several critical factors at play: colonial imperatives, artistic agencies, elite patronage, and nation-building efforts.
This keynote examines Nanyang art not merely as an aesthetic innovation, but as a deliberate cultural response to the complexities of identity, belonging, and place-making in a multi-ethnic Singapore. It highlights how artistic agency, historical forces, and intercultural encounters shaped a movement that continues to inspire new ways of seeing and valuing multiculturalism, both then and now, in our increasingly digital and interconnected world.
Low Sze Wee, Low Sze Wee serves as the Group Director for Museums at the National Heritage Board (NHB) of Singapore. Prior to joining NHB, he held the position of Chief Executive Officer at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre from 2018 to 2024. Initially trained as a lawyer, he later earned a Master’s in the History of Art from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. With extensive museum experience, he has led the curatorial teams at the National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum. Sze Wee has participated in numerous local and international exhibitions, including significant retrospectives on Singaporean artists, the Singapore pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), and collaborative projects in China, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom. In addition to being an award-winning curator with management experience, Sze Wee has also contributed to strategic arts planning and policy at the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore. He is the first Singaporean selected as an International Fellow for the Clore Fellowship Programme in 2013-14.
