Introduction to the Histories of Art II – G6

What is your favourite Buddhist Temple in Singapore? Why?

I don’t have a favourite Buddhist temple but the most memorable one is the Guan Yin Temple, also known as the Kwan Yin Thong Hood Cho Temple, on Waterloo Street.

Image taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/40261708@N02/6194545742

My parents pray to Guan Yin so this is a temple that we will frequent, more so in Read more →

Final Product! –

It has definitely been a really fun and interesting semester with all the creative and fun presentations and group projects! (It beats having to take tests, duh!)

For our final project, we settled on appropriating the goddess, Yakshi. It was overall a great idea and it was definitely fun exploring how a voluptuous body like what Yakshi had, meant Read more →

In reproducing Chinese porcelain designs on paper plates, we seek to address its changing nature, from decorative items to utilitarian wares.

The plate we referred to was the Chrysanthemum dish made in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), found in the Asian Civilizations Museum.

Chrysanthemum dish

China, Jingdezhen kilns, Qing dynasty

Porcelain with depictions of plants and butterflies

After research Read more →

Our group, The Tranny Diaries, focused on the transformation of Guanyin from male to female and how the current context parallels this transformation.

For me, I found it really interesting to be working on this topic about transformation and linking it to the transgender community in today’s society as my knowledge about these people are very limited. When I look at Read more →

Project: Yakshi / FHM (OSS Posts HERE)

Group Members: Alfred Yeo, Ching Jo Inng, Evangeline Ng, Lu Jia Xian

Subject: Indian Buddhism

Museum Visited: Asian Civilizations Museum

For this project, we chose to appropriate the traditional goddess / beings of fertility in Buddhist/Hindu/Jain mythology, Yakshi. We chose to appropriate her as her exposed dressing and her volumptious figure that was associated with childbirth Read more →

The final project was enjoyable because, I was able to not only find out more about Guanyin but also try and see it in the modern context and envision how different connotations it might have had it the artwork was made in modern times.

However, our journey to the final product was not an easy one as it was fraught with Read more →

Group: The Tranny Diaries

Team Member: Christy, Juliana, Raiza

The Tranny Diaries wants our topic to be ~*unique*~ as compared to other groups, hence the reason why decided to do on transgender issues to parallel Guanyin’s own transformation. Also, because issues pertaining to LGBT has been gaining ground recently (though with much more emphasis on homosexuality, such as the gay marriage act being Read more →

The Tranny Diaries group settled unanimously on the topic of Chinese Buddhism and went on from there. We were interested in Guanyin and how she was transformed from a masculine entity to a feminine one, similar to transgenders. For me personally, I agreed with the idea of exploring the issue about transgenders because I have never responded actively to a topic Read more →

Group members: Andrew, Chen Yue, Fern, Ziyu

After discussion, our group decided on doing a visual respond to a Chinese ceramic plate and we were very much inspired by paper plate arts as well as some artwork with combination of both antique design and modern context. Eventually, we each did two paper plates with existing antique pattern to demonstrate the following statement:

The Read more →

*Reflection will be right at the bottom of the page!

Proposal (click here for original proposal post)

Chosen subject: Indian Buddhism

Group Mates: Chio Jo Inng, Alfred Yeo, Evangeline Ng, Lu Jia Xian

Museum Visited: Asian Civilisation Museum Chosen Object: Gateway Bracket with four shalabhanjikas

Identified by her bosom and buttocks, the person identified in the sculpture is Yakshi.

We decided to appropriate this particular sculpture Read more →