Singapore doesn’t have the best gay track record. Just this year the city-state has fined two television stations for depictions of same-sex love.
It should come as no surprise to hear, then, that artist Martin Loh’s 24-image collection, “Pain To Pleasure,” which illustrate men in S&M situations, has been axed.
Loh had been meant to open the show this August at a relatively liberal gallery, Utterly Art, which had also commissioned some of Loh’s more mainstream pieces. The gallery insists that is wasn’t the sexual content of “Pain To Pleasure” that led to the cancellation, but simple logistics. Said spokesman Kenneth Tan, “During the August period we would have had to do two openings. One for his homo-erotic show and one for his Peranakan show. Because of this, we just don’t have the manpower to handle it. It was one or the other.” Loh, however, has another hypothesis:
We live in the Victorian times, anything that is beyond the missionary position is frowned upon. The gallery is exercising some kind of self-censorship partly based on misplaced business considerations. The assumption that this will not sell is absurd.
Realizing he faces an uphill battle back home, Loh’s now trying to shop his collection overseas.
And we’re sure this “censorship” publicity will do good things…
How about we take this to the next level?
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Souw TikHien
I like his drawings..and I want to know whether or not Martin Loh is intending to get an exhibition abroad asia. Peranakan in the Netherlands.