Artist Claudia Koh’s native city of Singapore, also nicknamed the garden city or as she likes to call it a fish tank, is a central motif in her work, where she draws inspiration from its abundant vegetation, humid environment and brutal urban landscape. Soft Spot is her first European solo show and just opened at Super Dakota Gallery in Brussels, where her paintings and living sculptures come together to form their own ephemeral ecosystem, in which the subjects are both trapped and liberated through the limits of a confined space.
This gorgeous exhibition deals with the paradoxes of home and intimacy, physical constraint and Chinese symbolism, all gathered in a space of liberation, leaning on the verge of claustrophobia.
Hi Claudia, it’s lovely to sit down with you. Where are you speaking to us from and could you introduce yourself and your work?
Hi! I’m currently in Brussels for the first time ever, in anticipation of my solo show opening tomorrow night at Super Dakota Gallery and I couldn’t be more excited (and nervous!) I’m originally from Singapore, born and raised, and I only moved away three years ago to come and study Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, from which I’ll be graduating in May. Rhode Island is a quiet haven compared to where I’m from — it’s great to be based in peaceful Providence while having the luxury of commuting to the bustling chaos that is New York, to visit art galleries and take inspiration from the city, despite the slight claustrophobia it can cause. To introduce my work, I’d say my practice is deeply rooted in my home of Singapore, my Chinese heritage and themes of social and physical constraint.
Your solo show, which opens at Super Dakota Gallery in Brussels on the 15th of March, is entitled Soft Spot. Could you tell us about it and explain the choice behind the name?
Soft Spot is my first solo show in Europe, which might explain why I’m really nervous, but I read somewhere that nervousness is also a form of excitement, so I’m not too worried. My last solo exhibition was about three years ago in Singapore and featured surrealist landscapes, along with different interpretations of myself and depictions of animals, which were all an indication of what I was already interested in.
Since then, my work has completely transformed and this exhibition features a newer batch of paintings and a whole new narrative. It will also include two sculptures, made from real flowers, lilies more specifically. To me, a Soft Spot is a phrase that you can play around with which possesses multiple meanings, starting with the idea of displaying my work in a liberated space which can also trigger some form of claustrophobia. My mum used to say to me, “Your father has a soft spot for you, that’s why he sides with you”, it’s both a feeling of vulnerability towards something but can also be used more metaphorically, it can be a Soft Ache, its meaning can be stretched to indicate something negative or weak. I wanted to attach this idea to the exhibition and turn a Soft Spot into a physical space where all of my paintings and flower sculptures can gather.
Since then, my work has completely transformed and this exhibition features a newer batch of paintings and a whole new narrative. It will also include two sculptures, made from real flowers, lilies more specifically. To me, a Soft Spot is a phrase that you can play around with which possesses multiple meanings, starting with the idea of displaying my work in a liberated space which can also trigger some form of claustrophobia. My mum used to say to me, “Your father has a soft spot for you, that’s why he sides with you”, it’s both a feeling of vulnerability towards something but can also be used more metaphorically, it can be a Soft Ache, its meaning can be stretched to indicate something negative or weak. I wanted to attach this idea to the exhibition and turn a Soft Spot into a physical space where all of my paintings and flower sculptures can gather.
Could you tell me a bit more about the two flower sculptures you mentioned which feature in the exhibition, Soft Ache?
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with botanical species and the symbolism attached to flowers in Chinese culture and mythology, which I believe to be quite unique. If you look at my sculptures, you can see that I attached metal dental braces around the closed flower, so that when it blooms it will restrict the lily, when the petals start to push out, the right amount of pressure will be used to restrain them, it will either guide or restrict the flower from blooming in a perfect way.
The flower is placed in a ceramic pot and inspired by the Japanese art of ikebana, in which stems are cut in an upward manner, in order to prolong the shelf life of fresh cut flowers. Japanese people use it because of its minimalist aesthetic and how it expresses a specific way of displaying flowers in a domestic space. This idea came from a growing interest in botanical species as well as a fascination with how metal functions in human bodies, the type of guidance it provides, like titanium used to support a human spine. These types of wires are specifically used for humans as they allow alignment, the metal is both used as a support but is also hurting the plant or flower.
When I was young, like most other kids, I had braces and my mum was obsessed with my teeth, with them being straight, taking me to the dentist all the time and to some extent these sculptures are directly inspired by my relationship with my own mother, by her guidance and obsessive behaviour around my teeth. The idea was to try this on another life form: how could I guide this plant into a form that I’m happy with? Harming it for the sake of prolonging its life.
The flower is placed in a ceramic pot and inspired by the Japanese art of ikebana, in which stems are cut in an upward manner, in order to prolong the shelf life of fresh cut flowers. Japanese people use it because of its minimalist aesthetic and how it expresses a specific way of displaying flowers in a domestic space. This idea came from a growing interest in botanical species as well as a fascination with how metal functions in human bodies, the type of guidance it provides, like titanium used to support a human spine. These types of wires are specifically used for humans as they allow alignment, the metal is both used as a support but is also hurting the plant or flower.
When I was young, like most other kids, I had braces and my mum was obsessed with my teeth, with them being straight, taking me to the dentist all the time and to some extent these sculptures are directly inspired by my relationship with my own mother, by her guidance and obsessive behaviour around my teeth. The idea was to try this on another life form: how could I guide this plant into a form that I’m happy with? Harming it for the sake of prolonging its life.
Your work is heavily influenced by painters and architects who have dealt with postmodernist themes, particularly their approach to spatial conditional constraints. Why is that?
Some of my references include Tetsuya Ishida, a late 20th-century Japanese painter, whose surrealist work focuses on coping with the rapid industrialisation of Japan and its fast-paced blue collar 9 to 5 working culture. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Japan was referred to as a futuristic place and Ishida’s work depicts the anxieties of not being able to keep up with this feeling of dystopia and finding solace in isolation. I can also think of Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille, whose vision is so similar to that of Singapore, he envisioned places that are not ideal, turned them into modernist sky high buildings, creating a perfect balance between greenery and concrete. I believe both of their works deal with the anxieties of a postmodern society.
The influence of Singapore nurtures your work, especially its famous public housing, HDBs, vegetation and limitations of space. Could you expand on this a bit?
Singapore is a very young nation, less than 70 years old, and a theme that is central to my work is the exploration of advanced urban planning, along with topics linked to the concept of housing overall. When I was younger, my brain couldn’t really process the feeling of restraint I felt, yet it has always been an underlying theme which I now understand as coming from my Singaporean upbringing.
The idea of a confined space is omnipresent there, dictated by urban and government planning, which is very restrictive of spaces and whose one priority is to pack people in very close together and almost on top of each other. I’m not saying that everything restrictive is necessarily bad, building high-rise, affordable housing was the only way to cope with a young, growing population that came from the slums, farms and villages after the devastating Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961. Moving these masses from quote unquote unhygienic villages to modernist buildings was also perceived as a way of moving forward as a nation, despite the very real feeling of displacement.
The idea of a confined space is omnipresent there, dictated by urban and government planning, which is very restrictive of spaces and whose one priority is to pack people in very close together and almost on top of each other. I’m not saying that everything restrictive is necessarily bad, building high-rise, affordable housing was the only way to cope with a young, growing population that came from the slums, farms and villages after the devastating Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961. Moving these masses from quote unquote unhygienic villages to modernist buildings was also perceived as a way of moving forward as a nation, despite the very real feeling of displacement.
How does this come through in your art?
The duality between the best and most restrictive option is an ongoing narrative in my work.
An average Singaporean flat will be made up of two to four big rooms and I was brought up in a typical flat like this. When I opened the door, I could see my neighbour’s flat, smell their food and hear people fight all the time and this is what sparked my interest in the tensions of living in close proximity. I lived so close to my family and was then uprooted to the other side of the world, which definitely changed my artistry and accentuated my obsession with painting confined spaces.
Singapore is also nicknamed the garden city, as it is 50% vegetation and 50% buildings, the city is designed in such a way as to include natural elements. Urban planning is very structured, while trees and vegetation soften the harsh nature of the architecture and act as a buffer. There are so many beautiful flowers, nature and vegetation everywhere.
An average Singaporean flat will be made up of two to four big rooms and I was brought up in a typical flat like this. When I opened the door, I could see my neighbour’s flat, smell their food and hear people fight all the time and this is what sparked my interest in the tensions of living in close proximity. I lived so close to my family and was then uprooted to the other side of the world, which definitely changed my artistry and accentuated my obsession with painting confined spaces.
Singapore is also nicknamed the garden city, as it is 50% vegetation and 50% buildings, the city is designed in such a way as to include natural elements. Urban planning is very structured, while trees and vegetation soften the harsh nature of the architecture and act as a buffer. There are so many beautiful flowers, nature and vegetation everywhere.
Your work is packed with water elements, fish and aquatic undertones. Why is this central to your narrative?
I always like to say that Singapore feels like being inside of a fish tank. I like the metaphor of an aquarium, which also mirrors the idea of something beautiful being trapped inside a confined space, that everyone can peep into. Like my paintings, I’m a fish/body in pressured water and in order to swim and survive I need this water. The Arowana fish is present in most Chinese households in Singapore, it’s really fleshy and expensive and will grow to a huge size. It’s a symbol of wealth and echoes the symbolism of feng shui and prosperity.
An aquarium is a vessel that allows everything to be seen for admiration, we can look in on the living things swimming around in it, like an invasion of privacy, in the same way that my subjects live inside my paintings and can be observed. There are different layers of windows and ways to observe them, just like in an average Singaporean apartment. It means you constantly need to be aware of how you look. I remember aquariums being placed next to windows, I would look over and see the fish there, like a fish tank, every living space is its own ecosystem. In my work, I try to paint alternative spaces and turn them into their own unique ecosystem. The idea of an aquarium is also to play around with the notion of a space within a space and the concept of company in constrained spaces, like the Arowana fish keeping the female subject company in my painting, Blind Spot.
An aquarium is a vessel that allows everything to be seen for admiration, we can look in on the living things swimming around in it, like an invasion of privacy, in the same way that my subjects live inside my paintings and can be observed. There are different layers of windows and ways to observe them, just like in an average Singaporean apartment. It means you constantly need to be aware of how you look. I remember aquariums being placed next to windows, I would look over and see the fish there, like a fish tank, every living space is its own ecosystem. In my work, I try to paint alternative spaces and turn them into their own unique ecosystem. The idea of an aquarium is also to play around with the notion of a space within a space and the concept of company in constrained spaces, like the Arowana fish keeping the female subject company in my painting, Blind Spot.
I’d like to talk about your piece entitled Night Nest, which I really love. Can you tell me about it?
Night Nest was my first fish painting and the first time I dived into this environment. The idea was to paint my body lying down with a school of fish who were perfectly okay with me being there and didn’t mind my presence whatsoever. There are three female figures in the painting and the idea is to think about how these different entities can exist in the same space. To me, it’s like a comfort painting, it feels very serene, like those bodies are all water bodies that belong and interact in one environment. It’s also playing with the sensitivity of fish, if you walk past an aquarium, the fish aren’t sensitive to other bodies. The idea of a nest resonates with what I’m doing overall, building alternate spaces, chosen ecosystems, like a bird’s nest or a built-in home, which I paint in dark hues and illuminate with dim lights from a lamp or the outside world.
You deal with themes of complexities of space, memory, liberation and constraint. Can you develop on these aspects a bit?
When I paint, I call upon my muscle memory, all these paintings are depictions of how I feel or once felt in my home, that feeling of being so familiar with one’s space, like when you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and don’t even need to turn the light on: you know exactly how many steps to take and that exact feeling of familiarity, of liberation even, is how I go into my work and try to navigate a particular space. I try to paint and build an environment based on this memory and my aim is to achieve a sense of liberation through it, both for me and for the subjects of my paintings.
I don’t only create a whole new space, through my work, I extend a familiar one. I like to use a scene of entrapment and use painting as a function of extension of that space and I apply the same thing to a body, shooting my body in a space I could exist in, still restraining or liberating to create an alternate environment.
I don’t only create a whole new space, through my work, I extend a familiar one. I like to use a scene of entrapment and use painting as a function of extension of that space and I apply the same thing to a body, shooting my body in a space I could exist in, still restraining or liberating to create an alternate environment.
The female body is central to your work. Tell us more about the subjects in your paintings, are they mostly self-portraits?
My last solo show took place during pandemic times, which can also echo the theme of confined spaces. During that time, I became fascinated with North Korea, propaganda posters and the idea of a dystopian futuristic society, or the obsession with how things should be. I went down a rabbit hole and started watching videos of secret vloggers, bought books about the regime, which featured beautiful, eerie and dark environments. I kept wondering, how must it feel to be an artist there? and actually found out that they are great at portraiture because of propaganda posters.
I’ve always worked and experimented with self-portraiture, yet I don’t describe my subjects as representations of myself, it could be a variation of me, or someone in my family line but not necessarily me. I think about putting them in a familiar setting and making the space comfortable for them. I’ll paint them sitting in a small corner, being comforted by the soft light from the lamp in the darkness, or recognising their reflection, like in my painting Tender Trap.
I like the idea of my subject recognising that they are being painted. Giving them the ability of awareness creates another form of dialogue and goes back to the idea of being observed, how do I feel looking at myself? If I paint someone who resembles me, how much space am I going to give them? A lot of my paintings are darker and figures are lit with a soft candle or light source, so I ask myself, how much of her body is bouncing off light, how much warmth does this light give her? Again, this provides a form of liberation. The figure of the nude has always been prominent in art history, nakedness is seen as vulnerability but I don’t shy away from it, it’s a pure state, another form of liberation when a body is naked in a domestic space, it’s your home, play with being not fully clothed in common domestic spaces.
It’s most important for me to depict an Asian woman, as a person of Chinese descent and a member of the Asian diaspora. In my exploration of self-portraiture, I’ve always used my body as a point of reference. I take videos of me squatting, or experimenting with unusual poses and I observe how my body reacts to pressure points on the floor, how it performs in a certain corner of my house, where my wrist feels the most pressure, how my body feels in an interior setting and I try to depict it visually. At first I didn’t know how far I wanted to go but I slowly got more flexible and wasn’t shy about trying out weird poses while playing with lighting. I was actually joking with my friend the other day that in a way I do performance art before my painting, I set up my lighting and orchestrate my own body. My relationship to my body has changed for the better since, I don’t mind the idea of people seeing a video of me with my feet in the sink, my body is figuring its space out.
I’ve always worked and experimented with self-portraiture, yet I don’t describe my subjects as representations of myself, it could be a variation of me, or someone in my family line but not necessarily me. I think about putting them in a familiar setting and making the space comfortable for them. I’ll paint them sitting in a small corner, being comforted by the soft light from the lamp in the darkness, or recognising their reflection, like in my painting Tender Trap.
I like the idea of my subject recognising that they are being painted. Giving them the ability of awareness creates another form of dialogue and goes back to the idea of being observed, how do I feel looking at myself? If I paint someone who resembles me, how much space am I going to give them? A lot of my paintings are darker and figures are lit with a soft candle or light source, so I ask myself, how much of her body is bouncing off light, how much warmth does this light give her? Again, this provides a form of liberation. The figure of the nude has always been prominent in art history, nakedness is seen as vulnerability but I don’t shy away from it, it’s a pure state, another form of liberation when a body is naked in a domestic space, it’s your home, play with being not fully clothed in common domestic spaces.
It’s most important for me to depict an Asian woman, as a person of Chinese descent and a member of the Asian diaspora. In my exploration of self-portraiture, I’ve always used my body as a point of reference. I take videos of me squatting, or experimenting with unusual poses and I observe how my body reacts to pressure points on the floor, how it performs in a certain corner of my house, where my wrist feels the most pressure, how my body feels in an interior setting and I try to depict it visually. At first I didn’t know how far I wanted to go but I slowly got more flexible and wasn’t shy about trying out weird poses while playing with lighting. I was actually joking with my friend the other day that in a way I do performance art before my painting, I set up my lighting and orchestrate my own body. My relationship to my body has changed for the better since, I don’t mind the idea of people seeing a video of me with my feet in the sink, my body is figuring its space out.
What’s your favourite piece from the exhibition? Tell me why it means so much to you.
I’d like to talk about Double Bliss, which is the most sentimental and has been the most impactful on me. I actually painted it in one day, while on FaceTime with my sister during my great aunt’s funeral, who also helped raise me. She passed away in Singapore and I couldn’t grieve properly because I wasn’t able to be physically present, funerals help you realise that death is occurring and my inability to grieve left me feeling excluded. Chinese funerals are a three to five day ritual, with prayers, all building up to the cremation. On the last day before cremation, I sat through six or seven hours on FaceTime at the table talking to family members, going through the rituals on my phone, all while painting. The visceral experience of attending a funeral through a virtual space, hearing the background noises, the chants and bells, all became quite strange and turned into a very eerie experience. The jar pictured on the painting is an urn and features two Chinese characters, 囍 meaning Double Happiness/Bliss, Happiness (喜, xǐ), when written twice, it creates囍, representing twice the amount of happiness. The Double Happiness symbol has traditionally been associated with marriage, as the matching pair of characters convey wishes of happiness to the new couple. I came across this symbol at the cemetery once, on an urn that held the ashes of a couple and that sight stuck with me, because Chinese people don’t like to mix death with something prosperous, yet this symbol of unity in the afterlife is something beautiful that goes against our beliefs of not polluting the idea of good fortune.
