Why Tang Da Wu?

Tang Da Wu is a Singaporean contemporary visual artist.

He is also known as being one the leading contemporary artist in the small country of Singapore. I am not going into the details about his biography (my next article will deal about that) but here are the key points you can easely remember :

Tang Da Wu was born in 1943 in Singapore. He began his real artist career in 1970 after his first solo exhibition of drawings and paintings at the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry.I will go further about Tang Da Wu’s life in the following article.

I decided to choose Tang Da Wu because he inspirated many artists in Singapore. His influence in such a small place is remarkable. For example, he has founded The Artist’s village which  is the main contemporary art group in Singapore. He helped his friends and artists develop their artistic skills in a creative good environment. At which point he became a true precursor of singapourean art. I have also chosen him because he is the second singapore artist who has been acclaimed for his work. In 1999 he received the Fukuoka Arts and Culture prize; five years after his compatriot, the Professor Wang Gangwu. For that he is considered as a pionner of performance art in Singapore. I have made my choice not only thanks to his background or the high market value of his art but simply because of the work he created throughout his career (he is still alive).

One other thing that fascinated me is his diversity in his works. He works in a wide variety of types of arts such as drawing, painting, scultures, etc. One of this works that really impressed me is Tiger’s Whip (if you want to see it, just go down), a sculpture of a tiger climbing a chair on a red carpet.

 I was able to see this famous word because it is currently is exhibited in the Singapore art museum.  By the way, i can give you the advice to attend some exposeures in this museum, it is very interesting and costs only 5 singapourian dollars. This tiger is also one of the emblematic animals of singapore with the lion. Indeed, as you can see with the second photo, the coat of arms of the city state of singapore are the lion and the tiger. Tang Da Wu did not forget his country of birth.

This work first stroke me (why a red carpet, a tiger and a chair in the same work ?) and made me feel unconfortable.

Then the link of his work with singapore was evident. And after looking at the rest of his work, his diversity and his importance in the culture of singapore, I started thinking about choosing him as the main artist of my blog.

I hope we will enjoy the next seven articles about Tang Da Wu.

Thank you for visiting my blog.