With more than 100 arts events happening during Singapore Art Week, The Straits Times highlighted several key ones to attend. ARTWALK Little India, an annual festival that celebrates the vibrancy of the historic precinct, was afforded a front-page feature for its year-on-year success at attracting heavy foot traffic to the neighbourhood, and its close engagement with the residents there.
As stated by Khairina Khalid, a LASALLE BA(Hons) Arts Management student who organised the entire festival with a team of classmates and support from Singapore Tourism Board, “We wanted to do something with the community, not just to go to [Little India] and plonk our events in.”
Such a vision resulted in Eunice Lim, our BA(Hons) Fine Arts alumna and three-time participating mural artist to ARTWALK, speaking with individuals of Little India’s community to unearth personal stories. She shared with The Straits Times how she was especially taken with Mr Govindasamy’s perseverance in maintaining his more than 30-year-old bookstore that is, the only one in Singapore, stocked with magazines and novels directly imported from India.
Titled Book-a-Meeting, her mural thus pays homage to the diversity of publications Mr Govindasamy carries, and seeks to be an extension of his shop’s façade. When asked for his opinion on ARTWALK, Mr Govindasamy commented: “I feel a little emotional that at last I am getting recognised.”
