Searching for Lee Wen
“I congratulate Chan Li Shan for having written this beautiful biography of Lee Wen, who died too soon from Parkinson’s disease. At the age of 30, Lee Wen gave up a secure and stable career in a bank to study art. He would devote the rest of his life to the practice of art in its many forms: drawing, painting, poetry, songs, installation and performance. George Bernard Shaw once said that the world consists of two kinds of people: reasonable people and unreasonable people. The reasonable people are those who conform to the world. The unreasonable people are those who seek to change the world. Lee Wen was an “unreasonable” man and artist. Lee Wen once described himself as a soldier of culture. He fought many battles for culture and art. His victories were not unnoticed. He was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 2005. We will never forget him as the Yellow Man and The Sun Boy.”
—Professor Tommy Koh
Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2024
https://www.bookcouncil.sg/slp-2024#creative-nonfiction
Winner of The Biography Prize, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/cbr/life-writing-studies/biography-prize/
Selected for The Straits Times “7 Books to Look Forward To in 2022”
https://www.straitstimes.com/life/arts/7-books-by-singapore-writers-to-look-forward-to-in-2022
Finalist for Best Nonfiction Title at the 2023 Singapore Book Awards
https://www.singaporebookpublishers.sg/page/book-awards
Longlisted for the Alan Chan Spirit of Singapore Book Prize 2023.
Critical Reception
“In Searching for Lee Wen, both the biographer Chan Li Shan and her subject the late Singaporean artist Lee Wen undergo constant battles to make art with true authenticity.”
—Suspect
https://singaporeunbound.org/suspect-journal/2023/5/26/art-as-searching
“If you’ve ever wondered about the littlest bit about Lee Wen or what art ‘means’, Searching is bound to open your eyes. “
—Plural Art Magazine
“Searching For Lee Wen is a biography written out of an abundance of respect and a complicated love.”
—The Straits Times
Endorsements
“I was delighted when I found Chan Li Shanʻs Searching for Lee Wen in my mailbox, and now even more so to be reading it. The book is structured in short chapters that resemble portraits. I am most moved by the interactions between author and artist, the dance of trust and fear, and the way Li Shan builds a narrative out of nonlinear moments in time. Thanks to this work, I’m understanding new levels of biography and the relationship between biographer and subject.”
Kristiana Kahakauwila, author of This is Paradise: Stories (Hogarth, 2013)
“In Searching for Lee Wen, Chan Li Shan offers readers a biography of a fascinating and important performance artist; a memoir of her own experience as his biographer, collaborator, and friend; and an innovative, nuanced, often moving mosaic of interview excerpts, testimonials from friends and admirers, timelines linking Singapore’s history to Lee Wen’s own, striking photographs, and meditations on the act of representing a life. The result is a memorable book, in which both Lee Wen and Chan Li Shan are ‘interfused, liminally, between being a sign, a signal and a person, enigmatically within, yet beyond each’—truly ‘an elusive joy to watch.”
Professor Craig Howes, Director, Center for Biographical Research; Professor of English, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
“We like to pretend that biographies are ‘objective’. That the truth they bear is untainted by bias or partiality or opinion. That they are pristine. Nothing is further from the truth. Biographies are fiercely subjective and born of one person’s obsession with someone else’s life. The obsessiveness is not only for the storyline or narrative, but the telling of it. And the telling of the life story of an artist like Lee Wen—significant, protean, impulsive, explosive, brutally honest—demands an obsessive storyteller. Li Shan dives headlong into the minutiae of Lee Wen’s life, disregarding guardrails of convention and is sometimes eccentrically selective. She is desperately seeking line and colour, and motif and sfumato; yearning for composition that is him. The result is bricolage, cracked, disrupted, dismembered. But beyond the veil of the tale, as the clouds of dissonance disperse, something of a shape emerges; distinct and hewn by instinct, intimacy and understanding. A Lee Wen shape.”
T. Sasitharan, Director, Intercultural Theatre Institute
“Flickering with exacting yet poignant insights while balancing anecdote, lyricism, curated imagery, laudatory response and verbatim record, this biography delicately deconstructs linearity without compromising on a heartfelt and multifaceted picture of a performance art icon.”
Cyril Wong, poet and fictionist
A Philosopher’s Madness
Lishan brings us on an honest and intimate journey of her life and experience of schizophrenia, both in personal and institutional settings. Her reflections and advice are useful for those going through similar conditions, or seeking to better understand schizophrenia. Meanwhile, her philosophical musings are scattered like gems through a clearly narrated story, stimulating thoughts and stirring emotions.
–Ashley
This is a personal and philosophical account of schizophrenia that aims to raise awareness of mental health issues. The personal aspect of the book reveals the gritty reality of what it is like to have schizophrenia, and explores issues faced by those with mental illness, such as secrecy and recovery. The philosophical aspect of the book raises questions concerning the nature of mental illness, such as whether or not mental illness is ultimately physical or mental. Referencing contemporary debates, such as whether madness is a disease or a culturally- determined label, this book is relevant not only to persons with an interest in a true story of psychosis, but also to those with an interest in the relationship between philosophy and madness.
A scholar’s analysis
Holden, Philip. (2020). “Do the Write Thing”: Writing Schizophrenia in Singapore. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. 36. 1-21. 10.1080/08989575.2020.1775981.
This essay examines two recent memoirs of schizophrenia in Singapore: Chan Lishan’s A Philosopher’s Madness and Danielle Lim’s The Sound of Sch. The narratives, through the memoir form, question voice, agency, and self-making in a society in which colonial governing rationalities have now transformed into national and neoliberal ones.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08989575.2020.1775981
Book launch youtube video
Yellow Man
“Yellow Man (2021), authored by Chan Li Shan and illustrated by Weng Pixin, is a wonderfully refreshing portrait of the late performance artist Lee Wen. Living in Singapore, there’s this uneasy collective tension that comes from feeling pressured to conform and stay within societal comfort zones. Or worse still, resisting doing something for fear of feeling judged. The book is a reminder to live life on one’s own terms.”
–Low Lai Chow, author of Becoming Margaret Leng Tan.
Lee Wen loved art, music, poetry and performance with a passion. He presented all art forms in his own unique way, even when others didn’t care for it. And boy are we glad he did!
An inspiring story of how Lee Wen became the great performance artist that he was.
Book chapters
In “Two Men,” I tell the stories of Vincent Cheng and Tan Kah Kee. My piece is about two different men in very different circumstances who worked for social justice in very different times. Tan Kah Kee rightfully earned his place as a celebrated name in the pantheon of Chinese legends. Vincent Cheng never reached such commanding heights, but should not be forgotten.
CHAN LI SHAN 