Towards Inclusive Public Arts: A Visual Sociology on the Photography Exhibition of “Through The Lens of Our Migrant Workers” at Bayfront MRT Singapore Station

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-228-6_53How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Public Arts; Migrant Workers; Inclusive Artspace

Abstract

This visual sociology article explains a photography exhibition entitled “Through The Lens of Our Migrant Workers” at Bayfront MRT Singapore Station as an effort by the Singapore government to represent migrant workers as part of the color of the population. In collaboration with Holdinghands Studio, this exhibition invites 20 migrant workers as artists, most of whom worked in domestic work and building construction ahead of the National Day of Singapore in August 2023. This study uses the Visual Discourse Analysis method by encoding and decoding visual objects, namely several photos from migrant workers who take pictures of their daily lives while living in Singapore. The findings of the article state, first, that public space as public art is a representational political strategy for the Singapore government to show the public the inclusiveness of migrant workers through exhibitions at the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Station near the tourism centers. Second, the exhibition portrays Singapore from the perspective of migrant workers, which varies from daily activities, human interests, nature, buildings, and heritage. Third, photography is a space for dialogue between residents in Singapore to reduce othering and stigmatization of blue-collar workers, thereby encouraging cross-cultural and ethnic dialogue by selecting public spaces to facilitate a wider audience.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Fuji Riang Prastowo
AU  - Muhammad Raffi Sopyan
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/06/12
TI  - Towards Inclusive Public Arts: A Visual Sociology on the Photography Exhibition of “Through The Lens of Our Migrant Workers” at Bayfront MRT Singapore Station
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Multidisciplinary Studies (ICoMSi 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 641
EP  - 651
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-228-6_53
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-228-6_53
ID  - Prastowo2024
ER  -