The Forgotten Murals of Paya Lebar Airport

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past: some unfamiliar, others forgotten, all fascinating.

I’m Jimmy Yap, the editor-in-chief of BiblioAsia, a publication of the National Library. Today, we will be talking about the forgotten murals of Paya Lebar Airport. Paya Lebar opened in 1955 as Singapore’s main airport. As air travel became more popular, the airport had to be expanded, and in 1962, construction began on a new international passenger terminal building that opened two years later. To adorn the interiors of the building, the government decided to have large murals installed in key locations. There was a competition to pick the designs, and in the end, three murals were chosen. Two by William Mundy and one by Shamsuddin H. Akib. These murals were hard to miss: they were between 9 to 12 m long, and about 1.5 m high. And because they were in prominent areas, the murals became iconic. One ofthem, in particular – a mural which depicted various cultural dances of Malaysia – has probably been the backdrop of thousands of photos. People used to pose in front of it when they went to see their friends and family off at the airport. However, with the opening of Changi Airport in 1981, PayaLebar Airport became an air force base, and the murals vanished from the public eye. A few decades later, Dahlia Shamsuddin, the daughter of the artist, Shamsuddin H. Akib, decided to find out what had happened to these murals. What she discovered broke her heart. Dahlia subsequently wrote about these murals and their fate in BiblioAsia. Dahlia is a senior librarian at the National Library Board, and she’s here today to tell us the whole story. Welcome to BiblioAsia+, Dahlia. So, Dahlia, tell me, what’s happened to the three murals?

Dahlia
Of the three murals, only one mural remains. Two of the murals have been destroyed.

Jimmy
Okay, which mural has remained?

Dahlia
The mural thats still remaining is “Skyline of Singapore” by Bill Mundy. The other two murals that were destroyed were my father’s one and Bill’s other mural on Malaysia.

Jimmy
Tell us a little bit about the relationship between Bill and your father.

Dahlia
My father was working for Papineau Advertising in the ’50s, up to the ’60s. Bill came to Singapore in about 1960 or the early ’60s, and joined Papineau Advertising. They were colleagues. My father was a commercial artist – that was what they called graphic artists then at the time. Bill came in and he was an art director.

Jimmy
How did the two of them end up taking part in the competition and winning?

Dahlia
Both of them decided to join the competition, but they didn’t tell each other. The announcement came out in the papers, and they decided to join. Later on, my father found out that Bill was taking part and that Bill wanted to submit two murals, two designs. So my father said, Okay, if he can submit two, I will submit two as well.

Jimmy
Tell me, what were the two designs that your father submitted? Because Bill submitted two and both of them were accepted. Your father submitted only one. So tell me about the one that your father submitted?

Dahlia
The one that my father submitted was on cultural dances of Malaysia.

Jimmy
Can you describe it a little bit to us?

Dahlia
There were dances depicted in the mural. So you had a couple [doing a] Chinese dance in a Chinese wayang costume, and you had Indian dancers. There was another couple [doing] the Malay dance. But this wasn’t the traditional or the more well-known Malay dance. My father decided to pick mak yong dancers because his elder sister and her husband had moved to Kelantan after the war, and I think he decided to pick the Mak Yong dancers from Kelantan as a connection with his sister. And the fourth dancer was a Sarawak dancer. I asked my father, “Why? Why did you pick Sarawak?” And he said that Sarawak was part of Malaysia. At that time, people were talking about Singapore, Malaysians, about being part of Malaysia. That’s why he depicted that.

Jimmy
Your father submitted two.

Dahlia
Yes.

Jimmy
Tell us about the one that wasn’t picked.

Dahlia
The other one had a very fascinating title called “Some Fascinating Eating Manners of Singaporeans”. I asked my father what the design was. He can’t remember it, but the design was returned to him.

Jimmy
Sadly lost. I was reading your article, and it says that your father’s mural was particularly hard to execute. Because [of the] iron strips, it wasn’t a straightforward mosaic. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Dahlia
The iron strips – or grilles, as my father calls them – were made in Singapore. The tiles were from Italy. Bill had gone to Italy to choose the colours and the tiles. They were all shipped to Singapore. Once they were shipped to Singapore, it was easy for the workers to just affix them onto the wall. But my father’s was an added one. Because the tiles were the background and the figures were in iron, so it had to be made in Singapore. So that was the added one. And because, you know, there are a lot of curls and you had the figures, flowing robes, costumes of the dances. There was actually a lot of work. My father said that he went to where the workers did it; it wasn’t done in Paya Lebar itself. One of the workers told him, “Wah! Lu punya banyak susah!” [“Wah! Your (design) is so difficult!”], because of all that turning and twisting.

Jimmy
Do you remember what your first impression of the mural was when you went to the airport? Did you go to the airport and your father said, I did that?

Dahlia
My father never [did]. I don’t remember my father telling me, “Oh, I designed that.” I sort of just knew it. When I used to go to the airport, [it was] not to fly. At that time during the ’70s, it was basically to see somebody off, and it was usually my aunt who went to Mecca. So we would go there. And I would go to the airport, look at the mural and tell myself Dad did that. And then after that go off. We never took any photographs. At that time, not many people had cameras. Well, my father had a box camera. But it’s not like now when you have a smartphone, and everybody takes photographs all the time of everything, right? We never took a photograph. My father doesn’t have a photograph of his mural. Neither does Bill.

Jimmy
That’s so tragic. So after Paya Lebar Airport became Paya Lebar Airbase, nobody could go in anymore, right? It gets turned into this military installation. And that was around 1981. There’s a bit of a story about how you got permission to go to Paya Lebar Airbase to hunt down the murals.

Dahlia
I told several friends about it. Then we all decided that maybe I should ask MINDEF [Ministry of Defence] what happened to it. I emailed them in 2009, and I only got permission in 2010. Only my father and I could see it. We had quite a number of friends who wanted to see it, and they said, no, you can’t. Just my father and I. We left our handphones with the guard. We were met by the PR person, a young lady, and an NSman, a private in the air force, and we walked over to the building. Everything in sight was actually boarded up. There were lots of cubicles.

Jimmy
So the whole space had been partitioned.

Dahlia
Yeah, partitioned. It wasn’t a nice partition, it was just for the air force people, which is somewhere they work. The most important thing was the aeroplanes. The only thing we could see was Bill’s mural because his was one level up. So you stand and you look up, you can see the mural. It’s still there. It’s not covered up.

Jimmy
Right, because it was actually on a staircase landing. Nobody was going to put offices on the staircase landing. That place is very prominent and very public, where people were just walking back and forth.

Dahlia
It was like a passageway, a very narrow passageway. Nobody’s going to build cubicles there.

Jimmy
So when you went, could you even find your father’s mural?

Dahlia
No, I managed to get the souvenir programme that was published in 1964. There were two pages where they showed a plan of the building. So we could count [the] pillars. They indicated pillars.

Jimmy
So that was a bit of a wasted journey. But subsequently counting pillars. While we were walking there, there were some air force people who joined us, and they were very helpful. They said, Okay, let’s go here. And then one of the men said, “Ah, I think there is a mural.” And I said, “Where?” They went to the site, and then they pulled the board. They said, See. No, no, it’s not. It was something else. I was looking up because I remember from the photographs I’ve seen in the NAS [National Archives of Singapore] collection, that there were phone booths. And my father’s mural was above the phones, but going around, where are the phone booths? I thought I saw something that looked like booths, but they were all used as something else. We went around searching, so we had a small entourage following us. And we couldn’t find it. We walked up to Bill’s mural, had a close look. We could see that the mosaic tiles were not like the usual flooring mosaic tiles. They were very pretty. Some of them were millefiori tiles, some of them had shimmer, a bit of a glitter. So they were not just flat, plain tiles. They were very nice. you found out that there’s a reason you couldn’t find your father’s mural.

Dahlia
While we were there, at the end of the tour, the PR [officer] said that they were moving over to a new building. And once they have taken everything done, then they would be able to find out where the two murals were located. At that time, we didn’t know that the murals were destroyed, we assumed that they were whole. So I said, Okay. They would inform us, but I think they were very busy and everything, so nobody informed us. So until 2012, when Bill was in Singapore, I invited him to attend an exhibition. We were informed by somebody who saw the murals that two of the murals were destroyed. The only one remaining was the “Skyline of Singapore”, because it was up there. I asked, “How was it? What was left?” In my father’s mural, the figures were torn out. While in Bill’s one, the bottom half was gone.

Jimmy
Oh, how did your father feel when you told him this?

Dahlia
When his friend told us, Bill kept quiet. I went home, I told my father, he just kept quiet. About three years later, Bill visited Singapore again. He travels to Singapore quite often. We were at my dad’s place, so I asked both of them, What was your reaction when you got the news? We were very angry. Very sad. As Bill said, shocked. My father also said it was very sad. They didn’t go on and on. But I think that being men, yes, I’m very angry and sad, I’m shocked. That’s it, move on.

Jimmy
Do you think your father would have liked to have kept his mural if he had the chance?

Dahlia
When I wrote the article, I asked my father, What’s your wish? And he said that he wanted it recreated.

Jimmy
What do you think will happen to the last surviving mural? They’re eventually going to move out of Paya Lebar Airbase and it will be turned into a housing development there. What do you think will happen to the last surviving mural?

Dahlia
I hope that the mural will be retained, and the building will be retained, so the mural doesn’t have to be moved anywhere. Because it depicts the skyline of Singapore at that moment in time.

Jimmy
For people who are interested, you can see what the murals look like in the July 2021 issue of BiblioAsia. And in fact Bill Mundy’s “Skyline of Singapore” is on the cover of BiblioAsia. And Dahlia’s story is actually inside. How long did it take for you to write this article, Dahlia?

Dahlia
It took me five years.

Jimmy
Why did it take you five years? What do you mean it took you five years?

Dahlia
I think the more I researched, the more information [I had]. If I had done it earlier, I think I wouldn’t have gotten all the information I wanted. I’m glad I waited five years.

Jimmy
So, tell me, what do you do at the library? You’re a librarian, but you’re not working at the National Library or the public library. So what do you do at the library?

Dahlia
I’m a cataloger. I catalogue legal deposit.

Jimmy
What is that?

Dahlia
If you are a publisher, under the NLB [National LibraryBoard] Act, you are supposed to deposit two copies of your publication to NLB. I think that also includes digital publications now. At least we have a record of all the books that are published in Singapore.

Jimmy
So you catalogue all these books that come in?

Dahlia
Yeah.

Jimmy
So you really get first dibs on all the new books published in Singapore.

Dahlia
Published in Singapore, yeah.

Jimmy
So this is what I would consider my favourite part of the interview. Who do you think is the coolest person in Singapore history?

Dahlia
Hedwig Anuar.

Jimmy
Okay. Apart from the fact that she’s a librarian, why do you say that?

Dahlia
Oh, when she was studying in London, she was a member of the Malayan Forum and also the Malayan Students Union. As a member of the Malayan Forum, she and other students discussed Malayan politics and current affairs. She also wrote poems in a parody during her time then [about] Singapore politics and Malayan politics. The library has a copy and so do I.

Jimmy
Very interesting.

Dahlia
It was published in 1999 by Landmark Books.

Jimmy
Ah, okay. Which historical figure would you like to have dinner with?

Dahlia
Florence Nightingale.

Jimmy
Why? Was your mother a nurse?

Dahlia
Yes, my mother was a nurse. Not only that, Florence Nightingale was also a data visualiser. She was the one who popularised the use of pie charts. She was a statistician. So now we are talking about data mining. Doing a lot of data, getting information. She used that a lot.

Jimmy
What are you reading these days?

Dahlia
There’s this book that was published recently: Khairat Kita: A History of Malay/Muslim Mutual Aid in Singapore. One of the things they do is help organise [funerals]. If you have a funeral, when somebody passes away, often you don’t know what to do. So you contact this khairat, and they will come and help you with everything, with the funeral preparations. With Muslim funerals, usually everything is done within 24 hours, so it’s very helpful. Besides funerals, anything to do with funerals, they also have social work. They even provide bursaries for children of members. A lot of these khairat, all these societies or organisations, they were actually created by kampongs. Or even, let’s say, the customs people, they had their own to help members. So this is one of the things that they do. So this book actually highlights what the khairat did. There used to be lots more, a few hundred. But I think in the 1980s when there were fewer kampongs, the authorities decided, okay, you merge. Maybe they have less than a hundred, less than 50 right now. But they play a very important role because all these things were from the ground up, helping each other, helping the community. And it’s not only for your funeral death expenses or rites, but also other social functions to bind either people in a kampong or people in an organisation together.

Jimmy
So I will say something to you, I just want you to respond without thinking. Paya Lebar Airport.

Dahlia
Aeroplanes.

Jimmy
Okay, that’s very obvious.

Dahlia
Concorde!

Jimmy
Oh, did the Concorde land at Paya Lebar?

Dahlia
Yes.

Jimmy
History is…

Dahlia
Important.

Jimmy
Why?

Dahlia
If you don’t know your history, then do you know who you are as a people? But the most important thing is to not make the same mistakes when moving forward.

Jimmy
And BiblioAsia is…

Dahlia
A must-read.

Jimmy
Thank you for that free advertising as I tell everyone. Thank you very much, Dahlia, for joining me on BiblioAsia+. To read all about the murals, how they were designed and how their fate was uncovered, please read Dahlia’s article on the BiblioAsia website. You can find it at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. Look for “The Forgotten Murals of Paya Lebar Airport”. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and BiblioAsia newsletter. Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.

Dahlia Shamsuddin, “The Forgotten Murals of Paya Lebar Airport,” BiblioAsia 17, no. 2 (2021).

Rebecca Tan, “How Changi Airport Came to Be,” BiblioAsia 17, no. 3 (2021).

“Paya Lebar Airport,” Singapore Infopedia, published 2014, National Library Board.

“Design for Airport Murals: 2 Win Prizes,” Straits Times, 24 March 1963, 8. (From NewspaperSG)

Justin Zhuang, Independence: The History of Graphic Design in Singapore since the 1960s (Singapore: The Design Society, 2012). (Call no.: RSING 741.6095957 ZHU)

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Gibson Analytics. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Dahlia for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.