From the 1980s to 1990s, artists such as Jimmy Ong, Teng Nee Cheong, and Ho Soon Yeen were notable for being some of the few openly queer artists of the time, or whose practices engaged with notions of queerness in Singapore. Ong's work from the 1980s, for instance, would feature black-and-white charcoal drawings that depicted nude, queer male bodies in various contexts and relationships. Around the same period in the 1980s, Teng would be known for figurative works across watercolour, pastel, charcoal and oil, with sensual and homoerotic depictions of male nudes.