Heroes, Islanders was the Singaporean artist Tang Da Wu’s first solo exhibition in Malaysia. The exhibition comprised a number of splotchy black faces rendered with Chinese ink on paper. His subjects are not famous figures; most are anonymous and could be described as archetypes—the stoic street vendor, the samsui woman, the working class boy, the ingenue. With the portraits, Tang is exploring certain human characteristics that have moved him, capturing the gulf between unassuming “salt-of-the-earth” folk and the more sophisticated urbanites of Singapore. The black Chinese ink is allowed to travel across the damp paper, bleed or trail in certain directions, forming hints of facial features and carrying suggestive effects. Tang regards these portraits as exercises to capture the elusive factor that defines a personality or figure, subscribing to the idea that the entire character of a person can be read from their face.