At Outram Park interchange, Wang Lu Sheng injects the pageantry of Chinese opera and the symbols of law and medicine into the station’s spaces. The artist was one of the most conscious about the space, as well as being aware of the flow and direction of human traffic. His works are designed as signposts, to help the user navigate through the corridors, while simultaneously triggering their imaginations and memories.

Wang undertook extensive research on the Outram Park area and learnt about its history — from the colonial era through to its transformation in modern Singapore — through interviews with original migrant settlers. He also looked through photo archives, and took graphic inspiration from traditional Chinese opera, which was the principal source of entertainment for the early immigrant occupants of the area.

At a large stair landing, Wang filled a large wall with a mural of a completely unfurled opera costume. Upon the costume, he features Opera-inspired visual themes. Due to its scale and bold colours, this mural has become a focal point for the station. At a separate 25 metre wall that leads to the Thomson Line, Wang also used an image of an opera mask which has been stretched to appear to be in transit along with the commuters, reforming and becoming solid again as it nears the end of the corridor. The streaming trails that the mask creates are highly suggestive of movement, even that of a train as it slows to a halt or speeds up to leave a station.

Wang was also inspired by a visit to Singapore General Hospital (SGH), where he learned about the CAT scan, a machine that enables medical staff to ‘see’ patient’s brains. From this, Wang developed the idea of a series of visual representations of thoughts and memories through the Medallions, as if looking into the ‘brain’ of Outram Park. Each Medallion contains a different graphic representation of a memory of the area, filling the interior of a human head in profile. Playing up the area’s association with law and medicine, the artist worked with historical images from the area such as early photos of SGH, policemen, multi-coloured HDB blocks, colonial buildings and soldiers. The Medallions also contain more abstract graphic elements such as colourful waves and swirls, and fragments of the MRT map symbols that are also reminiscent of DNA or cell strands from medical diagrams.