Thanks to a loud minority of folks who don’t get puns, wordplay, or artistic decisions, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) decided to take down the plaques that described two murals installed at stations along the Downtown Line.
The artworks — which remain up at Tampines West and Tampines East MRT stations — are titled “Welcome to Jingapore”, because the artist, Jing Quek, was trying to depict and showcase Singapore through his perspective. Thus, Jing + Singapore = Jingapore.
Folks, however, thought that the explanatory plaques displayed near the murals held blatant errors that were misspellings by the LTA. And so came the outrage on social media:
Quek himself had to speak out in response to the unnecessary public outrage over the title of his artwork, asserting that the wordplay was a deliberate choice.
“I want to state clearly first that the naming was intentional, and in the great tradition of Chinese and English linguistics, it’s called a Pun,” Quek wrote in a Facebook post. “So relax, don’t get too outraged.”
Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore then found out that the usage of Quek’s combination of his own name with “Singapore” dated as far back as 2011. But it seemed like nobody complained back then.
Nonetheless, LTA conceded to the irrational unhappiness of some people, and temporarily took down the plaques yesterday. “LTA is in discussions with the artist”, the government body noted to Yahoo.
As for the murals, they remain where they are, as they should.
