By Jessica Ye (Jessica Yap)
Spirit. Identity. Memory.
What does a city look like when it is changing? Perhaps not through the grand monuments and sweeping stories that usually define a nation’s history, but through the people who live within it, the workers taking a moment to rest, the women negotiating changing ideas of identity, the streets gradually taking on a new character. For Nanyang artist Lai Foong Moi, these quieter moments became an important part of her artistic language.
This August, National Gallery Singapore presents Lai Foong Moi: Crossings, the first solo presentation dedicated to the artist in Singapore since the 1960s. Bringing together paintings, photographs, exhibition catalogues and archival materials, the exhibition traces Lai’s journey as an artist and educator while offering a closer look at her observations of Singapore and Malaya during the 1960s and 1970s, decades marked by profound social and political change.
Born in Malaya in 1931, Lai graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 1954 before receiving a French Government scholarship to continue her studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. During her time there, she exhibited her work at prestigious salon exhibitions before returning to Singapore in 1958. She would become the first Malayan-born woman to hold solo exhibitions in Singapore and the Federation of Malaya, before returning to her alma mater as an educator, where she taught for 36 years.
Her career was remarkable by any measure. Yet despite being recognised as one of the region’s notable women artists during her lifetime, Lai and her practice have received comparatively little attention in the histories of Singaporean and Malaysian art.
Crossings offers an opportunity to look again.
Taking its title from two paintings created by Lai in 1964 and 1965, the exhibition explores the idea of crossing as a moment of transition, encounter and becoming. It is a fitting idea for an artist whose own life moved between Malaya, Singapore and Paris, while the world around her was undergoing its own transformation. The 1960s brought new questions of identity and nationhood to the region, and Singapore was finding its place as a newly independent nation.
Yet rather than attempting to capture these changes through grand historical narratives, Lai often turned her attention towards the everyday experiences of the people around her.
Her portraits are particularly compelling for the way they observe identity through the smallest details. In Crossing (Home Coming) from 1964 (featured image) and Crossing from around 1965, differences in dress, posture and presentation create two markedly different interpretations of the human figure. Painted around the time of Singapore’s independence, the works invite reflection on the tension between tradition and modernity, while Lady from 1966 presents an introspective female figure whose quiet presence raises questions about identity and self-presentation.
There is a delicacy to these works that makes them feel less like declarations and more like observations, allowing the viewer to linger over the individuals rather than simply reading them as symbols of a particular historical moment.
That sensitivity extends to Lai’s paintings of working people. In Labourer (Lunch Break), Trishaw Rider and Repairing, she captures workers not in moments of productivity, but in moments of pause. A labourer rests during lunch. A trishaw rider occupies a quiet moment of stillness. Someone concentrates on the simple act of repairing.
At a time when Singapore was rapidly developing and traditional forms of labour were gradually disappearing from the landscape, Lai’s decision to focus on these fleeting moments gives the paintings a particular humanity. These are not simply images of workers contributing to a growing economy. They are portraits of individuals with their own rhythms, lives and experiences.
The same contemplative quality can be found in Lai’s views of Singapore and Malaya. Singapore Street Scene (Looking along Victoria Street with the Convent Chapel in the Corner), Morning Street, Malacca and A View of Lion City Singapore (Aerial View) reveal environments in transition without turning them into triumphant images of development.
Instead, Lai leaves room for ambiguity. Familiar streets, changing skylines and ordinary surroundings become reflections on what it means to inhabit a place while it is becoming something new.
Perhaps this is what makes Lai Foong Moi’s work so interesting to revisit today. More than six decades have passed since many of these paintings were created, yet the questions within them remain remarkably familiar. Cities continue to evolve, identities continue to shift, and people continue to find their place within changing social landscapes.
Lai approached these questions through the quiet language of painting, finding significance in the people and places that might otherwise have been overlooked.
There is also the story of Lai herself, which forms an important part of the exhibition. Through archival materials documenting her studies in Paris, early exhibitions and 36-year teaching career at NAFA, Crossings presents a fuller picture of a woman who was both an artist and an educator. Her influence extended beyond her own paintings, shaping generations of artists through her work in the classroom and contributing to the development of Singapore’s early art scene.
As the second edition of National Gallery Singapore’s Dalam Singapore series, Lai Foong Moi: Crossings continues the Gallery’s exploration of significant yet underexamined figures in Singapore’s artistic history. More than simply bringing an overlooked body of work back into view, the exhibition gives us an opportunity to reconsider how we remember the past and whose perspectives become part of that story.
For Lai Foong Moi, the answer was often found in the quiet moments: a figure at rest, a woman lost in thought, a street before it changes. Beautifully observed and quietly assured, her paintings remind us that history is not only made through its biggest moments. Sometimes, it is found in the smallest ones.
Lai Foong Moi: Crossings runs from 14 August 2026 to 3 October 2027 at Dalam Singapore, DBS Singapore Gallery 3, National Gallery Singapore. General admission applies, with free admission for Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents.
The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of curator tours, workshops, sketching sessions and conversations exploring Lai’s work through art, fashion and identity. Of particular interest is Between Portrait and Performance: A Dance Response and Dialogue on Lai Foong Moi on 27 September 2026, which brings together performance, fashion history and curatorial perspectives to explore the relationship between clothing, identity and women’s agency in 1960s Singapore.
Featured Image: Lai Foong Moi. Crossing (Home Coming). 1964. Oil on canvas, 77 × 65 cm. Collection of Singapore Airlines Limited.
