Chua Mia Tee

[2][3] Chua was involved in the Equator Art Society, an artist group founded in 1956 whose social realist works sought to instil a distinct Malayan consciousness by representing the realities and struggles of the masses.

[3] Chua graduated from NAFA in 1952 and taught there as a full-time teacher for two years before returning to Chung Cheng High School to complete his secondary education.

[6] At this travelling exhibition, Chua would present his now well-known oil painting, Epic Poem of Malaya (1955), a work that embodies the desire to inculcate a distinct Malayan nationalism in the younger generation.

[6] However, the SCMSGAA would be dissolved after the travelling exhibition due to their perceived left-leaning politics and anti-colonial sentiment, and a new group called the Equator Art Society would be registered the same year in 1956.

[7] Comprising many of the members of the SCMSGAA, the Equator Art Society was an artist group promoting the use of realist-style painting and socially-engaged practices that commented on social issues in 1950s and 60s Singapore and Malaya.

[6] By the society's de-registering on 11 January 1974, the EAS had held 6 exhibitions at locations including the Victoria Memorial Hall, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and its premises at 56 Lorong 32 in Geylang.

[6] Chua would simultaneously develop his practice through his involvement with commercial art, becoming an illustrator at the Shanghai Book Company from 1957 and later working as a designer with Grant Advertising International from 1960.

[2] In 1974, Chua held his first solo exhibition of his social realist paintings at the Rising Art Gallery, with the attention garnered leading to his decision to be a full-time artist at the age of 43.

[12] These seemingly simple questions are loaded with political symbolism, illustrating the importance of Malay language, as a social bridge and main means of communicating in Singapore during the late 1950s and early 1960s.