and other messages: a review of Walk Into Their Lives
Simon Petre

Invited to make a contribution to this magazine based loosely around “art”, “education” and “outreach”, I struggled to find a suitable and interesting subject to explore. Fortunately I came across something which somehow brought all these themes together into a seemingly unique event. I shall describe the play between the varying parties involved, which resulted in a multitude of different interests and agendas coexisting simultaneously. And it is these relations which I inadvertedly found more interesting than the artwork itself.

Walk Into Their Lives was an exhibition of photographic works documenting the lives of migrant workers in Singapore — some taken by workers themselves. The exhibition attracted my interest for two reasons: the involvement of the Migrant Voices society, and the “outreach” nature of the exhibition. The event was held at a HDB void deck in the heartlands of Hougang on 6 March 2007; if one is to talk of outreach, reaching out to the average local Singaporean’s living space seems exemplary. Arriving at the location with some difficulty, I was struck by the unusual nature of it all: namely, the phenomena of works produced by distinct groups outside the community, the seemingly randomly order of presentation, and my realisation that besides Singapore Management University and Migrant Voices, a wider range of organisations had been drawn into the fold.

The exhibit was made up of four main parts, three of which had been previously shown in other venues around Singapore. The oldest of these was “Day Off: Photographs of foreign domestic workers in Singapore, a travelling exhibition” that was first shown from October to December 2003. Originally formulated by The Working Committee 2 (later known as Transient Workers Count Too) and presented by The Photo Essay, it involved six photographers¹ visiting and communing with foreign maids in varying environments where they spend their time.² The idea was to better understand the lives of foreign maids working here, focusing on the activities on their days off.

The second part was a collection of photographs taken as part of “InsideOut: Photographs by Migrant Workers in Singapore”, a six-month project involving thirty foreign workers who were taught the basics of photography and given cameras to take snapshots of their daily lives in Singapore. Originally presented as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival from 22 Feb to 5 March 2006, the photos vary from mundane scenes at work to intimate moments spent at home, giving brief insights into the lives of the workers.

The third was the contributions made by the Migrant Voices organisation. Apart from helping curate the selection of works, it invited some migrant workers to create some newly improvised paintings on the day, and also initiated the Web of Friendship, an interactive art-piece whereby each visitor could tie a string of coloured yarn onto a backing board, eventually adding up to make a matrix of ‘friendship strings’ over time thus symbolizing “unity and bonding of all the people”.³

This brings me to the final and in a way most integral part of the whole event. Students from SMU who participated in the “Grass Day Out” outreach (into “Bangla Square”) initiative by Migrant Voices went onto the streets and engaged migrants directly, in an attempt to give them an outlet for artistic expression and avenue to seek support in times of need. Apart from interacting with and learning about the lives of the various migrant workers, they also documented the meetings through photographs taken on site, forming the final part of the exhibit.

This description of the exhibit’s various constituents may seem a little dry, but it is important in order to understand the peculiar nature of the event itself. The conflux of all these separate works, some old, some new, admittedly ran along the singular theme of an attempt to engage with and represent the lives of migrant workers in Singapore. But this isn’t pure description I’m talking about; it’s curated in order to send a distinct message. That is, to give more recognition to the role this significant portion of the population has in allowing Singapore society to function as it does, an awareness which is lacking in the general populace. This heartfelt endeavour explains the motivation behind each of the works, but most importantly, it is the reason why it all came together in this exhibit. And in this case, the initiative came from a surprising direction.

As I found out after talking to those involved, it was the students at SMU who instigated the project and contacted Migrant Voices, who roped them into doing the “Grass Day Out” outreach programme, later adding the rest of the works from the “Inside Out” and “Day Off” projects. More surprising still, the SMU students initiated the whole thing to fulfill their quota of “co-curricula activity” (CCA) points demanded by their university, whereby they had to engage in some community project.

While one could be cynical about this, it was a group of engineering students who had independently learnt about the activities of Migrant Voices — one typically assumes engineers are not the type to be artistically inclined — and negotiated the administrative red tape to get the permission of the local town council to hold the exhibit within a void deck, so as to bring the message to the heartlanders. In this way, Walk Into Their Lives could be understood as an outreach project for the students, a space for Migrant Voices to advertise their activities, and a platform for the photographers involved whose artwork and message was being put out into a public space.

The active involvement of the SMU students in engineering the exhibition helped garner more attention to the overall event. That afternoon, the local MP came down to look at the works and give his approval to their efforts. This inevitably increased the overall pageantry of the day; the MP arrived with an entourage of other local government representatives and bodyguards, followed closely in heel by members of the local press. Present also were an official from SMU and the students’ teachers. Even a film crew from Channel 5 News made the trip down and were filming the procession of dignitaries, students, activists and local passers-by, for a potential spot on the late night news that day.

As the students from SMU guided the MP around the whole exhibit, in turn describing to him the meaning behind each work and the important social issues that lie behind them, I couldn’t help but wander if such politicians would readily give time and attention to such politically critical works of art in any other context. If Migrant Voices had asked an MP down, or had any other artistic/social welfare organisation for that matter, I would not think it as likely. Or perhaps, it’s just that politicians aren’t usually the kind to be seen at such jaunts, left as they are to attend other local grassroots community or art events on a much larger scale (à la the Singapore Biennale).

Moreover, the politico-critical nature of the photographs and their message made the amount of attention given by the local government and press all the more striking. The Web Of Friendship work set up by Migrant Voices fitted particularly well into the overall ceremony, forming a nice end to the procession. Journalists jostled to get a snap of the MP tying a string of yarn to the board in symbolic solidarity with Singaporeans and migrant workers alike, in a scene reminiscent of other governmental type initiatives to help strengthen community bonding (the Fabric of the Nation project from 2003 springs to mind), the difference here being that migrant workers are not usually included in the social fabric or framed within dominant conceptions of a Singaporean “community”.

This conflux of quite disparate individuals and groups within the locality was for me the most striking thing about this event. Present or involved in its production were members of education, government and non-government organisations. On the surface it functioned just like any other grassroots event, yet underneath existed a multitude of agendas with people coming from quite different positions. No doubt it looked good for the MP and local government to be involved and be seen as taking an active interest. Also good for the students, who apart from fulfilling their CCA points got extra recognition for such a novel project. And of course, for Migrant Voices it was an original platform to demonstrate what they do, push their cause and perhaps gather more volunteers.

Apart from these main parties, representatives from HOME (Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics) came down to show their support. Not forgetting the actual migrant workers present that day, and the ones out of the picture: corporate sponsors and other groups such as CathayPhoto, Fotohub, TNS, Friends of Thai Workers, etc. Curiously also out of the picture were the photographers who took most of the pictures for the previous exhibits “Day Off” and “Inside Out”. Although I met one there and talked briefly, the recognition for the work was clearly reserved mainly for the students who put the show together.

One can see how the markers left by the ideas and agendas of each group were somewhat unaligned, yet within such a singular but temporary context they managed to coexist. For me such an event is emblematic of how many exhibitions or art events in Singapore emerge. The multitude of parties required for something to be put together results in deeper underlying complexities. On the surface the event was a success, but underneath there seems to be contradictions to do with the reason it existed and the odd collection of people gathered there.

Finally, what of the audience? This is a group of major importance even if not paying customers or art critics — after all with no audience an exhibition surely fails. Ironically, as it turned out, the exhibit was taken down soon after the governmental procession had finished its run and the crowds left. Was the exhibition made only for the MPs? Herein lies the rub. I wouldn’t be cynical purely about the presence of governmental interaction on a surface level, but the fact that everything was taken down straight after the pageantry makes me wonder at the success of such outreach programmes. Migrant Voices expressed an interest to me in making the exhibit into a travelling show to tour around various heartland areas.

If it were really meant for the heartlanders, shouldn’t it have stayed longer? Perhaps there wasn’t the permission to do so. If that’s the case then the MP’s words of support to the press ring somewhat empty. The fact that the exhibit was put up in the morning and taken down at evening surely meant that the working population who lived there would have missed the whole thing. In fact, the only residents I saw stopping to look at the photographs were the young and elderly retired, who were milling around the void deck at the time. One boy I talked to said he had been at the children’s playground adjacent and had gone over to help them set up the photos during the day. While this outreach effort did reach some, it was perhaps only to a small degree of what the organisers hoped.

This brings me to question the actual aesthetic effect or power of the artwork, besides the relations around them which I have discussed. My immediate reaction walking around a collection of photos based on a bracketed singular group of people such as “migrant workers” would be to question the value or validity of its representation. What is the photographer trying to portray? Is the viewer supposed to immediately empathize with the hardships of a migrant worker’s life? Well, the breadth of scenes and documentation of the different workers lives were wide enough that overall biases of this kind were largely avoided.

However, there remains the problem for me of a degree in which the “migrant workers” were treated as exotic objects. Despite all the good intentions towards greater understanding about these “others in our midst”, one could go off into the opposite direction when trying to remedy a certain people’s representation, or lack thereof. With an extreme, reactionary disposition in representing what is in effect an “imagined” community of migrant workers, there is the danger of endowing (despite good intentions) these people with a victim status.

No doubt, the disparate lives of migrant workers in Singapore are complex and varied. We are all human, and I’m sure there are plenty of migrant workers out there who would not like to be treated as victims, as well as ones who are not always innocent and good natured people, as of course migrant workers are not exempt of the best and worst traits of human nature. Scraping off the surface to get at a hidden “reality” may reveal more than one expects. Or rather, painting a nice gloss over the previous coat may only hide the dirt which may actually exist underneath.

Another possible criticism with regards to choice of subject matter, in some cases the photographers chose to capture how creative and active migrant workers could be in their spare time. However, at times the photos seemed to flatten the aesthetic origin of the original activities, be it workers gathering and singing at a party or breaking down in tears at an airport when leaving their closest ones. All these activities are aesthetic and creative acts in a sense, and I couldn’t help but feel that the dominant modernist aesthetic of the photos somewhat deflated the scenes, whilst rendering them exotic and ‘not of this world’.

One could counter this argument, especially in the case of “InsideOut”, as the migrant workers themselves took the photos. So perhaps the problem lay with the medium and selection of photographs. Or perhaps it’s more about the message and curatorial direction of the works overshadowing the actual “art”. Why, then, is it that art which is so outwardly singular in its message, especially political art, often is aesthetically weak in drawing in the viewer?

Perhaps I’m missing the point. The works were put together to send a strong message, and not to pander to the critical discourse of art critics. Weirdly, I think they sit much more comfortably in the void deck of an HDB block than they would within the white cube space of art gallery. The most amusing and weird thing of all being that it took a group of engineering students from SMU to come up with and push the idea. Simply put, the originality in this event was not to be seen in the artworks themselves, but rather in their positioning and the web of relations tied around their exhibition.

1. The six photographers are: Sim Chi Yin, Joyce Fang, How Hwee Young, Law Kian Yan, Wang Hui Fen and Wong Maye-E. [↩]
2. Such as the family homes where the maids work, skill centres and self-help groups, the places travailed upon initial arrival of maids in Singapore and the airport where foreign workers return to their homelands. [↩]
3. Quote taken from press release of the Walking in Their Lives exhibit. [↩]