Woodcut movement
“The dissemination of woodcuts through print media, such as magazines and newspapers, provide an alternative mode of exhibiting art other than the walls of an art gallery.
“Due to the diversity of its subjects and genres, the woodcut movement is an art historically significant one in understanding the competing modes of representation and its narratives within the larger realist movement. Self-portraiture was featured prominently at the Six Men Woodcut exhibition held at the National Library in 1966 as the six participating artists contributed self-portrait prints. This exhibition is significant as it is the first in Singapore to feature only woodcuts. Self-portrait woodcuts by Lim Yew Kuan, See Cheen Tee, Tan Tee Chie and Choo Keng Kwang provide a mode of representation that consecrates the primacy of individual agency within the woodcut movement. This marks a shift from the woodcut movement’s focus on the society as a collective to an acknowledgement of the individual as an agent for social change. Against the backdrop of Singapore’s independence on 9 August 1965, the exhibition with its emphasis on self-portraiture suggests that the individual is recognised as a significant actor in the making of a new nation.” (Seng Yu Jun & Cai Heng, “The Real Against the New: Social Realism and Abstraction,” Siapa Nama Kamu? Art in Singapore Since the 19th Century, 58)

