What influenced Tang Da Wu

Many facts or historical aspects can explain the different works of Tang Da Wu : why he did that, what he wanted to mean. Tang Da Wu was born in Singapore, in 1943, it means during the Japanese occupation. Here is a picture showing the tragic day of the arrival of japanese army. It Will lead, as you can see on the next picture to a period of terror. This period lasted 3 years from 1942 to 1945 and
Changed the Life of every singaporean citizen, And more generally south-asian people under the authority of japanese army.

He studied and grew up mostly in UK and he is very concerned about environmental and social issues. At least, it can explains many thing in his works. The western countries were indeed, at that time more aware about this kind of issues than asian countries. That also explains the choice of Tang Da Wu to study there.

For example, about the Japanese occupation and cultural identity, the work « I Was born Japanese » is a very good example. I am sorry to put the light on such a terrible picture. We have to be aware of the period in which Tang Da Wu was born. This picture showing japanese solfiées looking dead singaporeans bodies is relevant on this purpose.

Tang Da Wu himself said he has four nationalities. Of course he is singaporean since the independance of singapore in 1965 but also Japanese because he endures the japanese occupation (from 1942 to 1945) for 2 years. Moreover, he is a British citizen, first of all because Singapore was under the authority of UK after WWII but also because Tand Da Wu studied a long time in UK. He used to say he loved this country. Finally, he was also a malaysian citizen since Singapore joined the federation of Malaysia in 1963, before independance. So the themes of national and cultural identities are really present in his works.

About environmental issue, a very good example is shown by his famous work, the tiger’s whip, whose the picture is attached in the first article. Indeed, the tiger suffers from massive hunting by chinese. They believe that the tiger’s penis has aphrodisiac qualities. They participate in his extinction. So we can say that the extremeness of social themes highly completed his artworks.

We can also say that the singaporean society inspired him. The freedom of speech in Singapore is not known for being the most respected around the world. By his work, Tang Da Wu want to say messages to the Singaporean society. His work is an other way to communicate with people and try to spread ideas.

That is also why he created the artist village. He wanted the other artists to have the same role as him !

His story

To understand how Tang Da Wu created all his work, let’s start with a short biography of the artist. He was born Thang Khain Hiong but he changed his name to Tang Da Wu when he studied abroad (in the United Kingdoms). It literally means « big bist ». Even this fact put the light on the strange personality of Tang Da Wu. What is stranger than changing his name to another name with such a meaning?

Tang Da wu was born in 1943 in Singapore. His father was a journalist with the Chinese daily newspaper Sin Chew Jit Poh. You can look here to one of the front pages of this newspaper. As you can guess, it is written in mandarin, I hope you are, not like me, part of the few people that are able to understand it and read it whitout using a translator :).

He grew up with three other brothers including one who became also a visual artist. He studied as a casual singaporean young guy, in a chinese-medium school. Even at the begining of his youth, he was told not to be a good company worker. He prefered indeed drawing than learning English.

After being acclaimed in 1968 by the National Youth leadership institute, and after successed in his first solo exhibition of drawings and paintings at the singapore chamber of commerce and industry, he studied in the UK, majoring in scuplture at the Birmingham polytechnic. He did very well and graduated in 1974 with the first class honours. He received the Bachelor of Fine Arts. He came back to UK later in order to receive a Master of Fine Arts at the University of London. Furthermore, he obtained a doctorate in 1988.  They were the sources of British contemporary arts.

Between undergraduate and master’s degree, Tang Da wu came back to singapore and did his first steps in the performance art.

In 1988, Tang Da Wu created the famous Arts Village, which is the first art colony. He wanted to enhance inspiration of artists to create works. The picture shows one of the basic meetings made by the "village".

Tang is married to an english woman, Hazel McInotsh. They have got one son, known as Zai Tang, who lived in UK and performs sound art.

In 2005, Tang Da Wu appeared in a documentary television serie, « 4*4 episodes of Singapore artist ». He became a sybol of arts in singapore.

During all his career, Tang received many awards for his works. As i said earlier, it began in 1970 with the drawings and paintings awards given by the Singapore chinese chamber of commerce and industry. It was his first exhbition. The last one is currently happening in the National Gallery of Singapore. The name is « earth work 1979 », it is about painting.