Modernity in calligraphic practice often consists of a move away from content and towards form. Esoteric scripts such as the oracle bone (Lin Hsin Hsin) and cursive (Tang Da Wu) scripts result in deliberate illegibility, evoking within the viewer an oxymoronic tension, at once able to recognize the presence of characters but unable to read them. On the other side of the equation, easily read writings in simplified characters defy our expectations of Chinese calligraphy but renew the art form for a Singaporean audience (Chua Chon Hee*). Ekphrasis did not sink into an amicable death, however, as artists continued to use calligraphy to ground the meaning of their painted forms, though with a much greater blurring of lines (Tan Seow Wei). 

In the Singaporean context, partly genealogically descended but also distinctly removed from the Chinese tradition, the presence of Chinese characters can also be ideological. Chinese characters in works produced in a foreign cultural field serves both as autobiography (Wong Keen*) or a declaration (Boo Sze Yang*). Expressed in non-ink media, simply the presence of calligraphy is sufficient to pull the black of oil-based paint to the tonalities of ink (Oh Chai Hoo*). 

Eventually, as we sink deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole and consider what multitudes of meaning the presence of Chinese characters can mean, we find that it is in essence not about its inscribed content but referential in nature, whether of a revered tradition, a cultural milieu, a body of aesthetics, form, shape, content, symbol… as Montaigne pithily expressed: ‘all we do is gloss each other’.