Don't call me (Very) Special

Godzilla ripping across The Big Land - click for larger pic

This is the second year we've been to the VSA annual show. This year, we bought a Chinese ink painting by Lim Mun Chong and a pen drawing by Lee Fook Hong - both, coincidentally, were of trees and had strong graphic elements we liked. We took to the The Big Land immediately - the variations of diagonal lines creating a real depth yet still retaining the graphic, comic-like, Tim-Burton-ish flatness (pic above is not too clear though).

Last year, we had bumped into Chng Seok Tng at the show and bought one half of a pair (no money lah!) of her lino prints. I remember I was a student in school when I first read about Chng Seok Tng in the Chinese papers. The article was about the fall she had just taken from a bus during an overseas excursion with her students. It was only some weeks or months later that she found her sight begin to diminish. Even when I did not care as much about Singapore artists, I kept a look out for her work because how she lived and what she spoke about was consistent with the art she made, and what her art communicated.

A colleague whom I was speaking to about the VSA show had objected to the term "Very Special Arts", which was too positive an affirmation that it backfired for him. His point was that the implication was not that the art itself was "very special" or had any intrinsic artistic quality, but that we were made to see and not forget that it was the artist who was "very special" only because of his/her disability. It's just charity, is the protest.

His sentiment is valid, I guess. Yet I couldn't help but wonder if this divide between the art and the person of the artist we insist upon is artificial and unnecessary. Especially today, can there even be a "natural", untainted response to a piece of art? Does having to come to grips with a practical, physical or learning disability in dealing with everyday life make an artist more attuned to his/her immediate surrounding, environment, actions etc, and therefore lends his/her art a greater consistency and immediacy?

The short bio on Lee Fook Hong says that he aspires to be a graphic designer one day, though he struggles with learning how to use the computer software that is the pen/pencil for the designer today. J and I empathise entirely with that! Both his aspiration and his difficulty...granted that we might probably eventually pick up the technical know-how (please someone tell me, what on earth are vectors and are they invented just to mock and stumble us???) faster than he would? Yet his love for and understanding of graphic elements and styles is clear at first glance.

For those interested, the VSA show will be on at Raffles City Shopping Centre ground floor until 30 August. Vaguely related is Raw Vision, a magazine on outsider art, with a generous online version.