The Singaporean artist who once turned an HDB staircase gold continues to highlight social issues through her art

When Priygaeetha Dia was in primary school, she would spend hours immersed in her colouring books. No one in her family had an artistic bent, and yet Dia was drawn to all things visual – drawing, colour, design, painting and photography.

“Art seemed like the only thing I could do,” Dia said. “Painting and colouring came naturally to me, and I didn’t experience that with any other subject or activity.” 

That passion for the visual arts never waned – she took Art at O Levels, and later, in 2013, entered LASALLE College of the Arts to pursue a bachelor's degree in fine arts.

Becoming an artist was practically a given, even though studying art took some getting used to. 

“In LASALLE, I had a bit of a culture shock, but it was the good kind,” she said. “Not only did I learn formal ways of doing art and the history of how the art came to be, I was also more exposed to the political and social parts of art.

“When I learned about how artists in the past used their work for social activism and calling out issues, I resonated with them,” she added. 

“These were the aspects of the industry that I found myself drawn to. It reminded me of why art was important.” 

It inspired her to use her art to call attention to social issues in Singapore and the region. Her work features themes such as racial identity and relationships, and class inequality. 

The 31-year-old Singaporean has exhibited at National Gallery Singapore, Singapore Art Museum and the galleries at Gillman Barracks. 

Dia is also part of Singapore Art Week 2024, showing new work at the Passages exhibition, which was inspired by her art residency in the Netherlands. From Jan 19 to 28, visitors can catch her soundscapes portraying the impact of colonialism on Malaysian plantations.

EMERGING STRONGER FROM PUBLIC BACKLASH

As LASALLE, Dia found herself gravitating towards creating art that “had a voice and a purpose”. That culminated in her final-year project in 2017 – a visual exploration of the concept of heritage in Singapore’s public spaces. 

“Some of my ancestors were goldsmiths and it was a point of pride,” Dia said. “I wanted to create something that evoked the beauty of my heritage against the simplicity of everyday Singapore life.”

She expressed this through The Golden Staircase, where she covered a staircase in her HDB block in gold foil. 

However, The Golden Staircase ended up sparking intense debate in Singapore. Was lining a public staircase in gold foil art – or vandalism? What rights do artists have when it comes to engaging with public spaces? 

Critics went as far as to question Dia’s “real” intentions. She told CNA Women that she was labelled a “troublemaker” and a “snake” who “didn’t care about others” living in HDB estates. 

The intense reactions from the public shocked Dia, who was then a 24-year-old student. 

“I knew it was important to shrug comments off and feel confident about what I do and why I do it as an artist, but it was hard,” Dia, who is now 31, reflected. 

“I couldn’t help but scroll through what people were saying about me online. It felt as if the whole country was making all sorts of assumptions about me. Not many bothered to understand where this young artist was coming from.

“There was also a lot of hostile racism and sexism in the comments on articles that discussed the staircase, and even my mum was scared for me,” she said.

Overwhelmed and distressed by the backlash, Dia nearly gave up. She took a step back to consider the purpose of her art, which ignited her drive to understand Singaporeans’ attitudes towards the arts and the role of an Indian woman artist in Singapore. 

“After reflecting about it, I decided I had to stay in the industry,” Dia said. “I wanted to figure out why an art project caused such strong reactions from my country and I wanted to channel the hurt and frustration I experienced as a minority into my art.”

After Dia graduated in 2017, she started doing social art research projects alongside creating art. 

Most of her work touched mainly on her identity, heritage and experiences as a Singapore Indian. Some works looked at the struggles and racist microaggressions she faced growing up. Others went deeper into her ancestry by exploring her family’s connection to the rubber plantations in Malaysia and their experience of migrating from India to Southeast Asia.

GROWING HER ART BEYOND SINGAPORE

Dia also continued experimenting with art forms beyond traditional painting and photography – and picked up art animation and computer graphics from YouTube. 

All these went into a commissioned solo exhibition at Yeo Workshop in 2022: Forget Me, Forget Me Not. Using computer-generated imagery (CGI), stock images, and materials such as latex and soil, the artwork narrates the story of labour migration from India to Malaya in the 1920s to meet the demand for workers in rubber plantations.

“Being a freelance artist and art researcher didn’t come with financial stability, so I had to take up multiple freelance jobs in marketing to sustain myself,” she said.

“It felt pretty lonely especially when a number of my friends had more stable careers and there wasn’t an art community I felt like I could easily tap into.”

Nevertheless, throughout the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Dia managed to get her work displayed at Gillman Barracks, National Gallery Singapore and Art Science Museum. These commissioned projects allowed her to tap into her heritage and experiences as a Singaporean Indian woman.

“Sometimes I feel like my art isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “But I’d put myself out there, keep improving my craft, meet new artists and curators, speak with them and work together, and then eventually my art pieces would be on display in museums – it’s a nice feeling.”

In 2023, Dia felt she had established enough of a name for herself and was ready to become a full-time artist. 

That year, Dia was nominated for an art residency programme under NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. The programme, called Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union (SEA AiR), is funded by the European Union and facilitates artistic and cultural exchange between Southeast Asia and Europe. 

Dia was one of three Southeast Asian artists selected and she spent three months in the Netherlands.  

“There, I made a lot of connections and though I wasn’t local, it felt as if I could fit in,” she said. “They were welcoming, open to sharing about their art, and passionate about the industry – I’d love to bring that culture here in Singapore.”

In the Netherlands, Dia also learned to adopt more creative and artistic ways to highlight issues such as race relations and post-colonialism in her work. 

One way was through the use of sound, which is a huge part of her art. Take her multimedia artwork, Sap Script, which is showing at Singapore Art Week in 2024. 

The work focuses on the experiences of workers in rubber plantations in Melaka, Malaysia, and digitally combines the surrounding atmospheric sounds of the plantations with the distant and indistinguishable voices of the workers. It allows the viewer – and listener – to immerse themselves in the unfamiliar experience of being on the plantation themselves.

“Working with sound brings the viewer into the experience and history of the art piece,” she said. “I wanted to let people know that sometimes you can’t see things even when they’re in front of you, so you’ve got to engage the rest of your senses, too.”

Her work has also allowed her to push the boundaries of what it means to be an artist in Singapore. 

“Dabbling with contemporary forms of art keeps me on my toes,” she said. “It makes me think outside of the box and be able to say more as an artist in this country. 

“It’s tough being an artist in Singapore, and even tougher when you’re a woman and a minority – the community is much tinier,” Dia reflected. “But I’m still grateful to be here and to continue working on issues that go beyond me, through the arts.”