The Soul of a Nation

As Singapore celebrates its 60th birthday, cultural icon Dick Lee unveils SingaPop!—a bold, immersive tribute to the nation’s evolving identity told through six decades of pop culture

- By Hashirin Nurin Hashimi

It begins not with a declaration, but with a question: what does it mean to be Singaporean? For Dick Lee, that exploration has underscored every lyric, every performance, every sartorial decision across his more than five-decade career.

And now, it takes centre stage in SingaPop! 60 Years of Singapore Pop Culture—an exhibition that marks the nation's 60th birthday with a heartfelt tribute to the people, stories and idiosyncrasies that have shaped contemporary Singapore.

“I realised early on that I needed to make music as a Singaporean,” Lee reflects. “But I didn’t understand what that meant. It wasn’t clear when I was starting out.” The 1970s Singapore he came of age in—just a decade past independence—had yet to coalesce around a sense of national identity. “People weren’t interested in defining ourselves as Singaporean,” he says. “But through my life and my work, I’ve been observing the evolution of our psyche.”

That quiet but insistent observation now takes form in SingaPop!, co-presented by the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. Opening on August 2 and running until December 28, the exhibition is more than a retrospective, it unfolds as a personal, often tongue-in-cheek meditation on identity, channelled through the lens of pop culture. From Singlish and hawker fare to music, film, fashion, and even the annual National Day Parade (NDP), for which Lee has been creative director multiple times, it celebrates the cultural markers that give Singapore its distinct voice. “It’s not academic,” Lee is quick to clarify of his first foray into exhibition-making. “It’s a celebration. A bit of an amusement park of Singaporean-ness.”

Curated in five thematic chapters and anchored by an immersive finale,