Abstract
Ideas of nostalgia in Singaporean writing and art often see classic themes of lost spaces, times and innocence at what sociologist Chua Beng Huat refers to as “the level of the individual biography and of collective memories”. However, contemporary Singaporean artists, who have no connection to the rural past, approach the idea of nostalgia in very different ways from their literary and artistic forebears. By analysing Tan Pin Pin’s film Invisible City and Alfian Sa’at’s poetry collection A History of Amnesia, this paper shows how these artists seek to politicize the idea of nostalgia through their fragmented yet lyrical portraits of Singaporean history, and use their art to critique the lack of memory in the official history of Singapore. Their engagement with this transformed nostalgia for elements of the past that can be salvaged, either non-fictively or fictively, represents an important step in reclaiming the agency of memory for a new generation of Singaporean artists and writers.