Dioramas of Industry is created from the agglomeration of readings, photographs, and narratives of the lives and experiences of women factory workers during the early days of Singapore’s industrialization. During the 1960s, the Singapore government encouraged the female population to consider employment, with factory work touted as the means to attain independence, and to help families improve their standard of living. However, social and gender expectations, lack of education, and the absence of union support create a unique set of problems for the workers. Often seen in promotional visuals, their contributions, time, and efforts were reduced to documentations of the economic success of the companies that they work in, and in turn, the modernization of the nation. Dioramas of Industry seeks to highlight this period of industrialization, by visualizing the emotions and lived environments of female factory workers in Singapore from the 1960-1970s using resources from the National archives and National library of Singapore in combination with the artistic and digital imagination of environments that were present during this time period. Using light and color to suggest the time, location, and mood of the painted scenes, works in this series will invite one to be curious about the lives these women lead outside the presented tableau.
The environments of factories in the 1960s have rarely been documented, allowing me to piece together archival photographs and narrative interviews to become what could have been the daily views of these women as they go through the monotony of the assembly line. Another observation to note, is that since photographs of factory workers are often taken during publicity tours, such visits encourage the visitors to be a ‘fly on the wall’, as the workers carry on their usual tasks, under the curious stares of the visitors, their heads lowered in concentration and discomfort due to the scrutiny, and flashes of the cameras. Therefore most of these archival photographs contain an element of tension, of voyeurism, as they are taken from the lens of viewing the workers as a means towards achieving productivity. The women are reduced to symbols of progress and technological advancement, significant in numbers, but not as individuals. Often absent from the public discourse, and seen as replaceable manpower, they face layers of discrimination, from having their mental health struggles being termed misogynistically as ‘hysteria’, to having their recreational activities purposefully geared towards stereotypically feminine interests such as beauty contests, and seeing their labor and time being reduced to trivial rewards such as a box of sweets from productivity contests. All these details within the microcosm of the factories have limited documentation, but what is available tells us the tale of a generation of women who were the first to witness the double edged sword of modernisation.
Using the combination of actual photographs of factory workers from the National Archives of Singapore and AI imagined environments from design and interior trends of the 1960-1970s in South East Asia, this series of works will seek to highlight the narratives and experiences of a group that is not often mentioned and credited in the forming of modern Singapore. Ultimately, this series is created from my perspective as a woman living in the same country, just fifty years apart. The works will be my attempt to start conversations about how the role of women in the workforce and at home will have shifted in this short time span, and to also seek out further dialogues and stories during this period when our nation’s priority was progress, and its people straddling between modernity and tradition.
