Just who is that woman on the wall?

The play Georgette begins with this question – appropriate enough for a woman whose early life is relatively unknown. Georgette Chen is mainly known as a pioneering Singaporean artist and one of the few women of that time. As a result, it is Georgette Chen’s arrival at Singapore customs that has captured the attention of heritage boards and historians, examining her impact on the Singapore art scene and her role in Singapore history. If there is a mention of her pre-Singapore activities, it is contained in the following words – born, married, studied, left.

Part of these lacunae is due to resources, rather than the understandable desire to cast a nationalistic cloak on Georgette. Georgette’s Singapore life is well-documented – simply because she was here. By contrast, records of her earlier life lie scattered across three continents, and in all likelihood, gone.

All is left is the question that the play tries to answer - who is Georgette Chen? Throughout the play, her portrait hangs, enigmatic as the Mona Lisa herself.

A narrator begins the musical, introducing us to the mystery of Georgette Chen. From there, the story proper begins at a customs checkpoint in Paris. Georgette Chen is still the bright eyed Chang Liying, and as the customs officer asks for the purpose of her visit, she declares confidently, “To be an artist!”

That customs checkpoint is a leitmotiv of sorts, in Georgette’s life. For the rest of the musical, Georgette bounces from continent to continent, crossing customs and cultures, with a family reunion in China, an art exhibition in New York, a stopover in Malaya. Georgette was a cosmopolitan woman, an enthusiastic traveller, and always in movement.

The sheer energy of the musical brings across this multiplicity of experiences that infused Georgette’s early life. A Moulin Rouge-sque hokey number introduces as to the La Bohemia that is Toulouse-Latrec’s Paris. An awkward family dinner, where modernity clashes with traditional customs, emphasises Georgette’s status of standing between worlds. A completely unnecessary Caribbean-influenced jingle jarrs, but otherwise the music is perfectly serviceable, tapping into common musical genres.

In certain ways this is not so much a musical about Georgette, but about Georgette’s world. By examining the world she lives in, the playwright Ng Yi-Sheng deliberately, or otherwise, compels us to understand the forces that were potentially shaping her worldview. Georgette herself as portrayed in this musical is oddly uncomplicated - she is a fairly standard literary character, that of a rebellious young artist, with a great love that forms her anchor. By focusing on her world, Ng escapes certain problems of having to recreate Georgette with the little textual evidence available, but instead draws on what is commonly known about the greater world to let the audience fill in the blanks themselves.

This has the potential to turn into a messy pastiche, if not for Eugene, Georgette Chen’s first husband and the great love of her life. The strength of their marriage and their mutual affection has been documented in the form of Georgette’s numerous sketches of her diplomat husband. The essence of their relationship plays out across several continents and in a particularly charming song by the narrator. The strength of their marriage sings out bright and clear, despite career paths that sent them in different directions – Georgette in New York for an exhibition, Eugene in Australia for peace talks, and a hopeful rendezvous in Malaya. Here, too, the most unusual aspect of Georgette Chen is illustrated; a powerfully independent career woman, confident of her love and lover.

The story of their love forms the overarching narrative for the early portion of Georgette’s life, framing and punctuating the story being told. A chapter of Georgette’s story ends with Eugene’s death, and she arrives on at a Singapore customs point, much as she began, waiting to paint a new life.

That being said, something more complex than a usual “rich girl bucking against society” would have been interesting. Georgette was unconventional for her time, but unconventionality is getting, well, rather conventional when it comes to historical figures. If only the historical sources had allowed a deeper look into her thoughts on art and representation, which might have given a sense of Georgette’s importance in Singapore art history, other than being unconventional. As it is, the uninformed viewer is left slightly puzzled as to what all the fuss is about this “woman on the wall”.

But for all this faults, Georgette wins on sheer charm, thanks to Ng Yi-Sheng’s deft handling of multiple genres and the English language.

So who is the woman on the wall? The question is repeated at the end, with the chorus in front of easels, Georgette’s portrait watching overhead. Judging by the musical, Georgette could be anything you wanted her to be – devoted lover, independent traveller, patient daughter, and of course, an artist. Now, if only there was a sequel.

Ng Yi-Sheng is a playwright, performance artist, and free-lance writer. Other works include 251 (the Annabel Chong story) and the book SQ21, profiling Singaporean homosexuals. He also has a completed play called The Last Temptation of Raffles, which has been read, but not performed. The reviewer strongly approved of the play, and hints broadly that it’s looking for a sponsor.

While Georgette Chen is well known as an artist, few may understand how she was like as a close friend and a relative. After she passed away in 1993, one of her friends gathered up her personal correspondence and donated them to the Singapore Art Museum (SAM). Currently interning with SAM, I have the rare opportunity to personally examine her letters, some of which date back as far as 1949. After getting past the old-fashioned cursive handwriting, I now know Georgette Chen from a much more personal perspective.

It is amazing that Georgette Chen kept almost every single correspondence she received – from greeting cards to letters and even bank investment statements and empty envelopes. One gem I found was a Hari Raya greeting card signed personally by Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first Prime Minister of Malaysia.

The sheer volume of letters and greeting cards in Georgette Chen’s possession attests to her congeniality and amiability. She received letters from friends and relatives from all over the globe, from New York to California to China to Australia. When she was hospitalized for an arthritis problem, her nieces and nephews sent her colourfully drawn and affectionately written greeting cards wishing her a speedy recovery.

Letters from friends and relatives were evidently extremely important to Georgette Chen as she made carbon copies of almost every letter she sent out. Almost all the letters she received were replied to promptly as well. She adhered strictly to the standard letter-writing etiquette, such as placing her Siglap Plain address at the top of every letter and signing off with greetings like ‘yours affectionately’.

Not being able to write or receive letters was also clearly distressing. In a letter to her friend Jessie Bloodworth dated January 14^th, 1964, Georgette bemoaned the theft of her typewriter by a burglar and expressed her surprise at finding that some ‘stamp-crazy boys’ had been stealing her overseas mail.

Georgette Chen, as a relative, was also very generous as can be seen from her relationship with a friend called Yoeh Foong. Knowing that the economic situation in China during the 1970s was rather unstable, Georgette remitted money and parcels of food items such as butter, cakes, sugar, sausages and lard to Yoeh Foong who lived in Shanghai. She even requested Yoeh Foong to send a mould of her mouth so that she could help make a pair of dentures!

Georgette Chen was also very much like ordinary Singaporeans, especially concerning her personal appearance. Looking good, it seems, did not only apply to her artwork. From her correspondence with friends Eileen Torland and Sura Kim, it is clear that she was a fan of hair dye, especially the ‘Technique’ brand dark brown range and used some form of hair medicine. In a few letters, she requested them to send over bottles of the hair dye over from the United States. On the other hand, her friend Dot asked in a February 3, 1967 if Georgette needed more hair conditioner.

Although Georgette Chen was born overseas, Singapore had clearly become her adopted home as observed in her writings. Political developments in Singapore and the region, which at times affected her artistic career, featured fairly frequently in her letters, especially those between her, a friend called Pat and a cousin. For example, due to the split between Malaysia and Singapore, she had to postpone an art exhibition that was supposed to be opened by the Tunku.

Georgette Chen’s embracement of Singapore as her home was exemplified by her learning of the Malay language, the lingua franca of society back in the sixties and seventies. Her enthusiasm is evident in her letters to her nieces Polly and Dorothy and her participation in the August 1962 Malay examinations. She even adopted a Malay name – Chendana, which cleverly incorporates her Chinese surname Chen. The name ‘Chendana’ was used in an October 17^th, 1967 to Pat regarding, quite appropriately, her meeting with the Tunku.

Georgette Chen probably kept all those letters and greeting cards for memories’ sake. Presently, they have become a wealthy source of material curators, art historians and interns like me. While I do not claim to be an authority on Georgette Chen, I have chosen to write on what I find most interesting about her. So while most Singaporeans may know Georgette Chen as an artist, I now know her as a fan of hair dye, doting auntie, loyal friend and letter-writing addict!

The author is an honours student majoring in history at the National University of Singapore. From May to August 2007, she is an intern at the Singapore Art Museum. Her interests are mainly in the history of China and Japan, but Singapore art history is become increasingly intriguing as she sieves through more and more letters belonging to artists.