You see, if I were a middle-aged, bearded Singaporean modern artist and I were to have used 9000 children’s backpacks to spell the sentence “She lived happily for seven years in this world” as a reference to the Sichuan earthquake in a German solo titled So Sorry (the entire exhibition a play/critique on governments, industries and financial corporations apologizing for tragedies and wrongdoings), or produced one hundred million porcelain hand-painted “seeds” and somehow coerced Tate Modern into placing them in their Hall—even (x 1) if I had a more than decent body of work behind me and some degree of international recognition—it would never ever carry the same weight as if I were a Mainland Chinese artist—even (x 2) if we were equally matched in every other way (which is a paradox in the first place I suppose, since I am about to propose that the difference in our backgrounds causes us to be ultimately altered to a stage of non-comparison).

Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds, 2010

The cultural weight of a(ny) country with four millennia of history, veritable vaults of culture, some degree of governmental struggle and brushes with large scale natural disasters behind it propels the cases of artists and writers—in terms of all of the following: their individual creative process, the public and critic’s viewing context, and the propensity for international acclaim—placing them in positions far more favourable than that of a country with barely a century of history behind it, still soul-searching for what precisely to consider local culture, stable domestic politics, and generally geographic-safety from earthquakes, volcanoes and the like.

The collective memory of the long-standing history of your country adds context to your work, whether you consciously capitalize on this or not. Some degree of suffering arguably makes the international crowd open its arms wider to receive you, is likely to cause people to inadvertently take you and your work more seriously, also allowing you to naturally do work that is seen as more socially salient. The inbuilt culture (or lack thereof) of your country affords you myriad elements and references to play off of (or lack thereof).

One’s chosen artistic or literary field does not matter in this; it is applicable across poetry, film, fine art painting, fashion, photography, long form prose, digital art.

Ai Weiwei, So Sorry, 2009

Ai Weiwei’s So Sorry achieved international acclaim and was seen as an outspoken move. As a Chinese artist, he could comment on the Sichuan earthquake and more, as an insider and a sufferer of these situations rather than from outside of it—which could be misconstrued as hypocrisy/bandwagon-jumping by comparison.

Manish Arora at India Fashion Week, 2010

Manish Arora utilizes traditional Indian craft like embroidery, appliqué, and beading, playing these and a typically colourful Indian palette and kitsch off Western silhouettes, to the delight of important fashion journalists such as Suzy Menkes and Lisa Armstrong in all leading publications. His line is also stocked at 75 well-known stores such as Harrods and Saks worldwide.

Gabriel García Márquez with One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) on head

Gabriel García Márquez’s Nobel Prize winning One Hundred Years of Solitude is informed by the rich culture of growing up around his native Aracataca, whilist his Autumn of the Patriarch takes direct inspiration from the flight of neighbouring Venezuelan, fellow Latin American dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

"Yone", poster for exhibition, 2010

Yasumasa “Yone” Yonehara’s instant Polaroid snapshots of sexy Japanese girls might have been laughable if the girls were not Japanese and it were not part of an emerging kogyaru (Japanese schoolgirl) culture into the global consciousness. His continued exploration of eroticism through photography seems to be a happy marriage between two uniquely Japanese elements, and has made him sought after by fashion labels, music groups and ad agencies worldwide for his Japanese pop-culture informed lo-fi cheki style, which, I feel, would not be privy to as much international influence were it/he/the models not Japanese.

This is certainly not to sound ungrateful or whiny, nor to be the typical Singaporean who loves to hate, but to point out to both the viewer/reader and the artist/writer that cultural and historical weight does impact artists and writers and their practices deeply and we should be aware of how and why they contextualize (and sometimes mobilize) creativity and to what degrees and effect. Context is such an essential part of how we experience Everything, but not everyone thinks to consider this, therefore I feel it is an important pointer to bring up especially (but not at all limited to) the way we view art and the way art is created and received.

With this awareness in place, I should go on to explain that this is definitely not to discount nor discourage Singaporean artists and writers at all, but to highlight how such an awareness can be important in shaping the space within which one practises one’s chosen craft. This awareness can help to suggest what might possibly be futile (having a lack of awareness or borrowing contexts wholesale without filtering it first through the lens of the self) and what might be the way to go about creating a viable context within which to work—the youthfulness of our context means that we have no rules and conventions to unlearn, the still-pliable nature of our culture means we are free to invent one, the lack of suffering should mean that we can retain some sort of artistic idealism, wonderment at the little things and freedom of the mind, the geographic-safety and stable domestic politics means we need not undergo undue stress and worry for basic living, and our globalized, cosmopolitan nature means that we should aspire to borrow varieties of elements, exploring these with sincerity and smarts, synthesizing these with our experiences to craft an unprecedented Postmodern context whose ingredients are borrowed but that we can come to truly own.