Look at Paris through the eyes of Asian artists

National Gallery Singapore's new show has more than 220 artworks, including some by pioneer Nanyang artists

- Ong Sor Fern

See Paris through a different lens at the National Gallery Singapore's (NGS) new blockbuster exhibition. City Of Others: Asian Artists In Paris, 1920s-1940s opens on April 2 and runs through to Aug 17. Bringing together more than 220 artworks, ranging from furniture to jewellery, as well as some 200 archival artefacts including film footage and images, the show presents the romantic City of Light through the eyes of Asian artists who lived and worked in the art capital.

From the 1920s to 1940s, there was a surge in the number of migrants to the French city, including a significant number of Asians.

Dr Phoebe Scott, senior curator at NGS and lead curator for City Of Others, says one of the points the exhibition makes is that the artistic exchange was a dialogue: Migrant artists' practices and the Parisian arts scene absorbed influences from each other.

She adds: "When artists from Asia came to Paris, they didn't necessarily become more French. They encountered an environment that was very diverse, and sometimes the experience of being an 'other' in this new place also made them assess their own heritage in a new way in their work.

"When they are in Paris, they look at the Asian tradition with new eyes as well and start to reinterpret it."

This dynamic is tracked through art and artefacts, 90 per cent of which has been borrowed from other collections. These include national institutions such as France's Centre Pompidou and Musee des Arts Decoratifs, and Japan's National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.