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This is the work by Indonesian artist. This artist must obviously have real anger perhaps, real need to try express and communicate a great unhappiness with what is around him.
If you see this entire sequence, you will find all kinds of words, including the famous F words' over there. And the way he used it is very interesting
because what he calls '*** desire'. It is either the F becoming the desire or the desire that is never fulfill.
And he talks about it in terms of freedom but he calls it mural freedom instead of moral freedom which is very interesting
because mural also means this is a mural as an artwork so he's obviously having a great deal of fun and teasing that's going on
It is very cute. He puts undiscovered violence over there and as the government talks about violence, there are instances of violence
and so many other violence that the government is not even aware of and he's bringing this kind of awareness to the attention of everybody.
I think this is very very important that's what a political artist done
Now this is what I would call pretty blatant political art. I don't think it is too subtle.
It doesn't require to be a rocket scientist or a great genius of interpreting art in order to realize
that this is obviously in the realm where the artist want to register his discontent, unhappiness.
and moral outrage at what's going on around him. Not all political art are like that. A lot are more subtle.
Basically the kind of open space we use and have refreshments and cocktails
before people either go in to our conference hall at the SMU or after they come out after an event.
So everybody who visits SMU and comes up to this level is going to be impressed of this artwork.
I am using the word 'impressed' meaning they can't help but notice it so in that way it just makes an impression.
Not everybody who has seen this artwork either from public or SMU community has been 100% happy with it.
Some people feel that this is a little bit too confrontational therefore it should be removed.
But I am very proud that at least up to now the management has decided to not remove it but the pressures felt every now and then
in the small place like Singapore to try to remove artwork that is in a direct way confrontational or political are very strong.
I think this is what we shouldn't be doing. We should be encouraging and educating people about art and the many functions of art.
I just want to make a comment that artworks that that has critical comment such as this always invite a lot of calls for the artwork to be removed.
which I think it is a negative thing.