Frame size: 81.0 x 62.0 x 2.5 cm,
Image size: 80.0 x 61.0 cm
Chen Cheng Mei was born in 1927 in Singapore, and was trained at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) from 1949 to 1954 where one of her primary teachers was Cheong Soo Pieng. Working for a time as a French Language translator in a Bank, she took leave from her job to spearhead alongside artist Yeh Chi Wei the loose Ten Men Art Group that travelled to various parts of Southeast Asia including Malaysia, Brunei, Bali, Java, Thailand and Cambodia. Chen also undertook trips by herself further afield to Canada, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Kenya, China, India, and Sri Lanka. Travel was an integral part of Chen’s artistic process and practice as she accumulated numerous sketches and photographs from her trips. Between the 1970s and the 2000s, Chen Cheng Mei travelled extensively across several continents. These travels saw her continuing to visit many locations in Southeast Asia, as she had throughout the 1960s, as well as touring further afield in South Asia, East Africa, and elsewhere. Unlike the artist’s travels through South and Southeast Asia with the Ten Men Art Group during the 1960s and early 1970s, Chen’s travels from the later 1970s onwards were typically taken alone, or with friends. In this work attributed to a scene in Sri Lanka, figures engaged in quotidian activities dominate the composition, the colours of their skin and attire constituting a principal animating feature in the works. The limited palette of the work allows the large areas of flatly applied browns, and golden yellows to resonate in harmonious contrast.
