PABLO BAEN SANTOS

I had last weekend free so I decided to go see some of the sights around Singapore. I live right in the heart of the city and most of the tourist places that are worth looking at are within walking distance of my apartment. I stopped at the Singapore National Library and was rejected for a library card because I did not have my passport with me. I went to Raffle's Hotel and saw how the enourmously rich live, business men lounged on the cigar devan and pampered families ate five course meals. Raffle's also contains a bar that was frequented by Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. It is creatively titled "The Writer's Bar." I also went to "Simlim Square," a shopping center where you haggle for electronics and has a hawker that serves excellent tandori chicken.

I also visited the Singapore Art Museum. It features the largest collections of South Pacific art on the planet. Malay, Indian, Singaporean, and Hong Kong artists are all represented. Unlike many American art museums that feature a mishmash of classical and modern art presented with little rhyme or reason, the Singaporean collections are all unified and you can read the story of each artist and his work as you go through the museum. Many of the presentations are chronological. Perhaps it is because that what we think of as art doesn't have a very long history, less than one hundred years, in this region so they are able to present an accurate explanation of the social context and motivation behind each piece of artwork. Maybe the museum just does it because it is sponsored by a borderline totalitarian state.

One of the most interesting pieces that I saw was by an artist named Pablo Baen Santos titled "Bangong Kristos." In English it means "The New Christ." The center of this oil painting was a dark skinned man perspiring blood. On his back the Christlike figure carried the dollar sign in place of a cross. If you gaze at the painting long enough you begin to see an American flag waving in the background.

As an American I really don't know how I should respond to this. The Singaporeans have seemed to embrace American culture without reserve. There are probably more Starbucks coffee houses and western style malls per square mile in Singapore than America. I hope that the dollar sign is a symbol for economic oppression that has colonial roots, an issue historically much larger than America. I would like to think that America did not go on to cause problems for people greater than the ones we were liberated from during our Revolutionary War. Unforunately, we probably did. The questions we should ask ourselves now is what, if anything, can we do to help remedy the situation.