Kumari Nahappan

Kumari Nahappan (born 1953) is a Malaysian-born Singaporean contemporary artist best known for her large-scale public sculptures that often depict natural subjects such as fruit, seeds, and spices. Aside from sculpture and public art, Nahappan's interdisciplinary practice also spans installation and abstract painting.

Her most well-known public sculptures in Singapore include Saga (2007) for Changi Airport Terminal 3, Nutmeg & Mace (2009) for the ION Orchard, Pedas-Pedas (2006) for the National Museum of Singapore, and Pembungaan (2011) for OUE Bayfront. Other sculptures at sites overseas include G Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the J.Y. Campos Centre in Manila, the Philippines, and the Chengdu International Finance Square, China. Nahappan is of Indian ancestry, with her grandfather from Kerala and her grandmother from Andhra Pradesh, both migrating to British Malaya around 1910. Nahappan's minimalist acrylic paintings of cadmium red were contrasted with Cai Heng's delicate monochromatic Chinese ink on paper works. Candles were set around the paintings, and 360 test tubes were suspended in a spiral shape as the centrepiece installation. Nahappan held a solo exhibition titled A Pooja through Nature in 2004, featuring an exploration of chilli and saga seed sculptures in natural settings.

From the mid-2000s, Nahappan developed numerous public sculptures displayed across Singapore. Eight giant bronze sculptures of chillis were presented on the grounds of the Singapore Management University as part of the Singapore Art Show in 2005. She created the public sculpture Pedas-Pedas in 2006, "pedas" meaning spicy in Malay. Displayed on the grounds of the National Museum of Singapore in conjunction with its reopening in December 2006, the bronze sculpture with wax covering depicts a large red chilli pepper leaning on its side. 2007 saw the creation of Nahappan's sculptural work, Saga, on display at Changi Airport's Terminal 3. Cast in bronze and varnished in red, the large-scale saga seed serves as Nahappan's celebration of the numerous saga trees in Singapore. The large-scale sculpture Nutmeg & Mace was created for the ION Orchard in 2009. In 2014, Nahappan created two large bronze apple sculptures, Apollo and Artemis for the Farrer Park Hotel. In 2016, Nahappan participated in public art exhibition ENVISION: Sculptures @ the Garden City, presenting the work Road to Fifty (2015) which consisted of 50 giant fibre-glass saga seeds painted red scattered along Empress Place Lawn. The same year, an installation by Nahappan was commissioned for Once Upon A Time in Little India, the first special exhibition at the Indian Heritage Centre. The work, The Weighing Scales, featured three tonnes of saga seeds spilling out from weighing scales and down a flight of stairs at the centre, examining the vanishing trade of goldsmiths in Little India, who traditionally used saga seeds as a weighing measure for precious metals.

Art Abstractions and representations of nature feature significantly in Nahappan's work. The red hues of the saga seed recurs as a characteristic trait in her work, from sculptures of chilli peppers to the "pulsing reds" of her abstract paintings.

Awards In 2011, she won the Artist of the Year Award in the 15th edition of the Shanghai Art Fair. She was given the Ksatria Seni Award in 2004 by the Museum Rudana in Ubud, Bali. Nahappan has also received commendations in the Philip Morris ASEAN Art Awards in 2003 and the UOB Painting of the Year in 1998. She won Shell's “Discovery of the Year" award in 1992 while completing her advanced diploma in fine arts at LASALLE.