This text is a brochure created by the National Gallery in Singapore, promoting Georgette Chen’s exhibit. Georgette Chen (1906-1993) was an artist who travelled/lived around the world before starting a new chapter in Singapore. Georgette Chen was an artist who lived through world war 1 and 2, as well as the Chinese revolution, and pioneered the ‘Nanyang’ style of art.

As she moved Singapore, after divorcing her second husband, she moved to Singapore when it was still a part of Malaysia. Chen’s life and experiences that are depicted in her artwork show the birth of Singapore’s culture through time. This brochure–although it explicitly presents information regarding Chen’s life and her artwork–implicitly represents Singapore as a multicultural capital by using Chen’s life as proof that Singapore’s culture is not only separate to their Malaysian history, but that it has existed for a long time.

Emphasising small details about Chen’s personality (As they mention she used to paint with her friends..) humanises her and creates common ground between the exhibit and viewer/reader. This widens the target audience. Instead of using artistic terminology and specifying art techniques/styles, they’ve highlighted Chen as a Singaporean individual. Her experience working at NAFA and teaching locals, contribute to this idea that Singapore played a significant role in Chen’s life and path to success as an artist. Yet in Chen’s artwork contains still-life scenery of people, nature, Singaporean fruits, instead of typical war scenes that Chen must have experienced during the global events she lived through. Additionally, during Chen’s career in Singapore, the initial stages of this city/state’s independence, the primary goal must have been economic development. But her work shows a different side of Singapore, the connected, diverse side. This might signify that, as Singapore is currently known as a hub for finance/technology/business, this is the ‘Singapore’ that people like Chen want to put a spotlight on. This brochure shows Chen as someone who presented Singapore as a cultural capital, instead of using the struggles and wars she lived through as an inspiration to her art, the local, ordinary scenes are what inspired her.