Painting from Pain: Art as a Space for Self-Discovery and Hope Within Persons with Experience of Incarceration, CANVAS (PID144)

12pm – 12.30pm EDT, 4 September 2024 ‐ 30 mins

Workshop Session

At which point does a prison become a training ground for visual artists and how can aftercare for ex-offenders be seen in the light of continuing education for those who had received training while incarcerated?

This presentation discusses how art practice serves a transformative process of self-discovery for those who are incarcerated and how afterwards with the right support, art can serve as a means positive distraction or even a means of livelihood to prevent recidivism.

In specific, the presentation will look at works and artists trained at Changi Prison's Visual Arts Hub and aftercare artis support group CANVAS.

Speakers

Ming Yen Phan

Co-Leader, CANVAS, Singapore

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Barry Yeow

Co-Lead of CANVAS, CANVAS

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Ming Yen Phan

Co-Leader, CANVAS, Singapore

Since 2017, Phan Ming Yen has been working with Visual Arts Hub (VAH) of Changi Prison and persons with experiences of incarceration who are artistically gifted and who have received arts training in creating platforms and opportunities to showcase their works. He has been involved with CANVAS, an aftercare support group for former  VAH members ince its inception in 2019 and was responsible in organising CANVAS’s first solo exhibition. 

 

Phan is at present an independent writer and researcher and has been involved in Singapore’s arts and culture scene variously as music critic, journalist, writer and arts manager for the past 30 years. 

As a former journalist with The Straits Times, Phan has written on various aspects of the Japanese Occupation in Singapore and as an arts and cultural researcher, he has written on music in 19th century Singapore and also on the Syonan Symphony Orchestra during the Japanese Occupation for Cultural Connections, the journal of the Culture Academy of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth. He was also a contributing writer to  the book Singapore Soundscape.

 

Aside from his ongoing research on the Malayan Campaign and music during the Japanese Occupation, Phan also researches into the history of Chinese diaspora, tin and small towns in Perak’s Kinta Valley. Malaysia. Phan’s fiction and poetry has been published online in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and by Ethos Books and he has also appeared as a featured writer in the 2016 and 2022 editions of the Singapore Writer’s Festival.