Rediscovering Lai Foong Moi, a forgotten female pioneer of Nanyang art

Artists Georgette Chen and Lai Foong Moi, both Paris-trained and influenced by the post-Impressionists, were the only two women teaching at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in the 1950s. Today, Chen has her place assured in the male-dominated canon of Nanyang art while few recognise Lai’s name.

Crossings, the late Lai’s first solo exhibition since 1963, casts a belated light on the overlooked Nanyang artist who was the first Malaya-born woman to hold solos in Malaya and Singapore, in 1959. Feted in her youth, the Seremban-born artist was even commissioned in 1960 to paint a portrait of Sharifah Rodziah, the wife of Malaysia’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. The work is on show at the National Gallery Singapore till Oct 3, 2027.

The exhibition’s curator, Teo Hui Min, became interested in the pioneer artist’s unwritten story after encountering a painting of hers in 2018. She says the reasons for Lai’s fading from the canon are rife with speculation. Pointing to Lai’s liminal place in the 1960s, she adds: “Having been born in Malaysia and then spending most of her life in Singapore, there is this tension when ideas of the nation become very bounded. It was quite difficult to make room for these nuances in terms of identity.”

Born in 1931, Lai went on to teach at her alma mater, NAFA, from 1959 to 1995, the year she died. Needing to balance her identities as artist and educator, she focused her energies on her students, including Tan Choh Tee, Salleh Japar, Boo Sze Yang and the late Khoo Sui Hoe.

In Teo’s interviews with Lai’s students, they recall a self-effacing educator who encouraged individual expression and imposed little of her own artistic life. This was unlike, say, her contemporary Cheong Soo Pieng, famously an interventionist who had few qualms about altering his students’ works.

“Talking to some of her students, overwhelmingly, they agree that her legacy was in teaching,” says Teo, which might be a reason Lai’s art took a back seat. After 1963, Lai showed only sporadically in group exhibitions – while her colleague Chen was consciously circulating, tapping networks and influential connections.

There are currently 12 of Lai’s works in the national collection. Teo estimates that the artist completed about 100 works in her lifetime, including the 25 on show in Crossings.

In Crossings, situated in the flexible Dalam project space within the permanent art history exhibition Singapore Stories, Teo includes still lifes from Lai’s NAFA days and nudes from the artist’s time at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts on a French government scholarship. What stands out in Teo’s selection is a ravishing bouquet of Lai’s portraits, largely of women wearing various modish kebaya and frilly Western styles.

“I think it demonstrates a very sharp awareness of the choices that were increasingly available to women in terms of how they could fashion and present themselves,” says Teo. Lai herself was fond of the figure-hugging cheongsam, which was considered professional wear in the 1960s.

Her urban scenes and labourer portraits, too, stand out for their disavowal of heroic tropes. She painted a samsui woman and a coolie at rest in Labourer (Lunch Break) (1965), which showed at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Says Teo: “Unlike many of her contemporaries who were painting scenes of a bustling Singapore River, a busy Chinatown or a growing business district, Lai was taking a slightly more quiet, introspective approach towards her depictions of the city.”

While Lai’s name has been included in key exhibitions and articles on the Nanyang art movement, this small exhibition gives more heft to the person behind the art and argues for a bigger place for her in Singapore’s art history. Teo hopes this solo can spur further research into Lai’s legacy, which she says offers a different model of artistic success. More research, she says, needs to be poured into learning more about Lai’s time in Paris and Europe, and looking into the paintings she did overseas in the region as part of the Ten Men Group.

Alas, little is certain about what Lai herself thought about her aesthetics or pedagogy as she did not leave any writing behind, nor does she have a formal estate. Much of Teo’s attempts to uncover the psyche of the artist had to be inferred from the clues she left in her paintings. With nary a self-portrait in the show, Teo instead reads Lai’s subjectless 1968 still life as her artistic self-portrait, referencing Chinese and Grecian ceramics and art magazines.

“There are these little traces that are left behind. But I think that kind of personal dimension, you know, may always be a mystery,” says Teo.

Book It - Lai Foong Moi: Crossings

Where: City Hall Wing, Level 2, DBS Singapore Gallery, National Gallery Singapore, 1 St Andrew’s Road
When: Till Oct 3, 2027
Admission: General admission ticket required; free for Singaporeans and permanent residents and $20 for other nationalities
Info: www.nationalgallery.sg/sg/en/exhibitions/Lai-Foong-Moi-Crossings.html

This article was originally published in The Straits Times.