Sun Yee II (b.1919)

Sun Yee was born in Zhejiang, China. She studied at the Xinhua Art Academy in Shanghai and the University of Japan in Tokyo before going to France where she studied with notable French modernist, Fernand Leger. Her works have been met with successful exhibitions in France and Japan. A competent artist of Chinese brush and oil mediums, she has held exhibitions at the Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1953.

Sun Yee founded the Singapore Academy of Arts and was a prominent figure in the developing Malayan art scene after relocating to Singapore in 1954. That year,  she also held her first exhibition in Singapore. Subsequently, she travelled widely in Malaya, Thailand, and Borneo, researching and painting the local subjects and landscapes. She promoted the creation of localised visual idioms centred on regional themes in both her writing and art. She did an exhibition in Singapore in 1963 called "Flowers of Nanyang," in which she used Chinese ink to illustrate local and regional botanical species.

“Old Street”, Oil on Canvas, 80 cm (W) x 65 cm (H)

Here is a colloquial scene of a Stirling road in the 1960’s. Seeing as only black and white photographs were available and nonetheless hard to come by, it is likely that this was a live street scene painted in that very moment. This piece has a certain significance in Singapore’s history, as it captures a mark of progression and a moment of old-meets-new. 

This is because of the newly built “HDB” flats that lay along either sides of the street scenes. Some may even recognise the familiarity of wooden poles that are strung outside to hang our laundry, which is still commonplace in this day and age. As one can see, HDB’s back then do not look like the 23-story high rise buildings we see today. Rather, they took the form of perhaps a building of up to four to seven floors, which was still considered rather progressive for that time. Sun Yee was very much ahead of her time, as her paintings behold glimpses into the future as well as the past. 

One great rationale for building the iconic HDB buildings in Singapore was actually due to an event that happened nearby Stirling Road - the notorious fire of Bukit Hong Swee in 1961. This fire had destroyed the entire kampong of attap houses and left 16,000 people homeless, creating a national emergency that led to the first big public housing project of the new Housing and Development Board (HDB). The government had decided that these atap houses of the kampong, typically made of organic materials such as bamboo and straw, were incompatible with the durability requirements of a building community, as it had become so evident that a single hint of flame would spread easily ‘like wildfire’, as the saying goes. The government could not tolerate any more risks to the community in this way, and so, the iconic HDB building was born and popularised all across Singapore through the ages to come.  

The crowded, bustling, 'squatter' kampongs so familiar across Southeast Asia have long since disappeared from Singapore, leaving few visible traces of their historical influence on life in the city-state. Singapore is even more developed today, but on Pulau Ubin, we can still see some remaining examples of Singaporean Malay and Chinese farmhouses in a traditional rural setting. There is a good representation of these traditional and functional building types there, albeit with some recent changes, such as the replacement of attap roofs with corrugated zinc roofs. Sun Yee, in many ways, had captured an important development in Singapore and a transitory period between the old and the new.

“Old Street II”, Oil on Canvas, 80 cm (W) x 65 cm (H)

Another one of Sun Yee’s streetscape paintings here is done in oil paints - a more rare piece of hers as she is known mostly for her Chinese Ink on Rice Paper works. This painting, Old Street II, depicts the old Sultan Mosque at Arab Street, around the 1950’s. As we can see from this live snapshot painted live in time (without the privilege that modern artists get by painting from coloured photographs), there is no hint of the organised roadways that we see today, as cars and horse-led carriages alike are scattered amongst the jumbled area. At the same time, it is also less busy as we do not see the semblances of bustling shops and commerce that we would see in and around today’s Sultan Mosque. 

It is not only the gentrification and developments surrounding Sultan Mosque that have changed, but even the mosque itself, has unsurprisingly gone through some changes of its own. In the constantly developing nation that is Singapore, heritages spots that remain can be seen as a dime a dozen, However, despite renovations being made to the mosque and its surroundings, its integrity has remained throughout as the space continues to be a safe-haven and popular go-to for many of the muslim commmuity in Singapore. 

One of its most recent developments, which took place in January 2016, had cost $3.65 million and took a total of 15 months to complete. The newest additions were made with integrity and purpose, as some of these additions include elderly-friendly amenities such as a wheelchair ramp at its entrance and two glass lifts that will take worshippers from the first level to the prayer hall on the second level. The auditorium, office, and ablution area have also been expanded, and the mosque given a fresh coat of paint. Seeing as half of the 3000 people that fill the prayer hall during Friday prayers are elderly folk, some could say that it was a change that was much needed, as the upgraded facilities will make it more convenient for these worshippers.

It just goes to show that sometimes, change to heritage areas can be done in a way that is respectful and that still allows the old characteristics of the building to peek through.

“Pagoda by the River”, Oil on Canvas, 64 cm (W) x 58 cm (H)

Yet another landscape painting done in oil, this time of Singapore’s Chinese gardens, painted in 1975 which was incidentally the year that Chinese Gardens was built, also. It was designed by Prof. Yuen-chen Yu, an architect from Taiwan, with the concept in mind being based around Chinese gardening art. The main characteristic is the integration of architectural features with the natural environment. The Chinese Garden is modelled along the northern Chinese imperial style of architecture and landscaping.