‘Journey of A Yellow Man No.11: Multi-culturalism’ operates as both a performance documentation and artwork. It records the artist’s performance executed during the Sept Fest Art Conference: ‘Multiculturalism in Singapore’, held at The Substation, September, 1997. At the conference, remaining full-clothed, Lee Wen covered himself in yellow paint, and presented a paper discussing the prevailing ‘conservatism’ in Singapore art that privileged particular artistic mediums over other. Arguing against the situation, where he perceived the overrepresentation of certain mediums such as watercolour, Chinese painting and calligraphy, and lack of visibility for ‘experimental art’ such as installation and performance practices during the period, the artist went on to form the letters C(hinese), M(alay), I(ndian) and O(ther) out of rice, and subsequently obliterated the arrangement. He then began to strip to his briefs, got into a bathtub and washed his yellow colour off. The performance ended by a bottling of the yellow bath water into several plastic containers, which were given away to the audience, with the artist claiming ‘Now I am a water colourist too!’
