issues of culture, nationhood & identity in modern malaysia art
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ISSUES OF CULTURE, NATIONHOOD AND
IDENTITY IN MODERN MALAYSIAN ART
Redza Piyadasa
Introduction
Modern art activity in Malaysia began in earnest in the years
after World W ar II. This belated developm ent, peculiar to the Malaysian
situation, may be attributed to the lack of encouragement given to
cultural activities by the British, who begun to annex parts of the Malay
peninsula, beginning in 1786. As part of the colonising process, the
British had introduced a Western system of education during the 19th
century, for the purpose of training the natives to serve in the lower
echelons of the administrative service. Central to the British objective
was the colonial subjects competency in the English language. Some
knowledge of English history, legal and cultural values was also
introduced to ensure loyalty to the new colonial regime. Art had no
useful political function and was thus never seriously developed during
the colonial era. The western system of education paved the way for a
modernisation process whose impact lay in the new modes of
perception and thinking founded upon rational, investigative and
individualised considerations. These new perceptual considerations
differed radically from the traditional spiritual and religion-centred
world-views prevailing among the multi-ethnic peoples of peninsular
Malaya and the northern Borneo territories during the 19th century. The
subsequent introduction of western cultural forms including
architecture, modes of dress, literature, music and art was an inevitable
outcome of the ongoing modernising processes. The exposure to
naturalistic tendencies derived from western art influenced the
emergence of a new kind of visual artist, equipped with new
interpretations of the environment. By the mid-1920s, a small number
of self-taught artists, drawn from the Chinese, Malay and Indian
segments of the populace, had began to render the local landscape in
the naturalistic manner via the watercolour and oil mediums. These
initial efforts, reflecting romanticized, idyllic and picturesque
approaches, were linked to outmoded western academic art models.
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Also imbibed was the new notion of a self-expressive mode of artistic
creativity.
The rapid and sustained growth of a modern, multi-ethnic art
tradition in Malaysia has reflected varied artistic concerns and creative
approaches. The rapid evolution of this art tradition was encouraged
by the official recognition of our visual artists by the new post-colonial
government with the achievement of independence in 1957. A new
recognition that culture could play a vital role in moulding nationalistic
aspirations resulted initially in the establishment of the Ministry of
Culture immediately after independence. The setting up of the National
Art Gallery of Malaysia on August 28, 1958 was a major development.
The Gallery played a pivotal role in promoting artistic developments.
There was now an official body to promote national-level art
exhibitions, collect and document the works of local artists and, more
significantly, project the works of Malaysian artists onto the
international arena. The new nation-state was thrust into the arena of
post-colonial, third world aspirations and the role of art, as a means
of projecting national pride and identity, resulted in efforts to promote
exhibitions of modern Malaysian art overseas via government
sponsored touring exhibitions. Of consequence was the granting of
government scholarships for talented local artists to pursue formal
training in the art colleges of Europe and the United States and the
subsequent opening of art departments in some of the newly opened
Malaysian universities, from the late 1960s onwards.
The subsequent growth of a vibrant modern Malaysian art
movement in the post-colonial contexts has revealed diverse approaches
in the search for cultural relevance, as might be expected of artists
operating in a multi-racial and multi-cultural milieu, lacking a
homogenous cultural ideology. Malaysian artists have imbibed
modernist ideas and values from the West and also utilized techniques,
motifs and influences derived from the rich traditional sources in their
efforts to forge a localised artistic identity. Artistic developments in
Malaysia have not strictly followed deterministic evolutionary patterns
and practicing artists have not always adhered or maintained strict
ideological or aesthetic positions. Parallel artistic approaches and
1
For a fuller discussion of the pre-independence period refer to Redza Piyadasa, On Origins
and Beginnings in T.K. Sabapathy (ed.)
Vision and Idea Relooking Modern Malaysian Art
National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1994.
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concerns often overlap simultaneously and the notion of a neatly-
structured, linear-type, reactive modernist art tradition founded upon
causal, evolutionary conceptual breakthroughs , as was the case in
the West, has not strictly applied here. A discussion of the various
creative approaches pertaining to the search for cultural pertinence and
artistic identities would therefore be a more suitable way of
understanding developments that have shaped modern Malaysian arts
dynamic evolution thus far.
A broader overview accepts historical circumstances and
developments for the sudden emergence of modernist-type art activity
where there was previously no antecedent
. This is true of the situation
prevailing in many non-Western countries where modern artistic
expression, circumscribed by the secular art gallery and art museum
context, is a relatively new transplant. Such a broad overview can allow
discussion of the following significant artistic developments in
Malaysia:
a)
Regionalist tendencies preceding the independence period
(from 1945 to the end of the 1950s)
b)
The move toward international orientations and abstract art
commitments (from the late-1950s to the 1980s)
c)
The emergence of Malay-nationalistic and pan-Islamic
tendencies among Malay artists (from the mid-1970s to the
early 1990s)
d)
Neo-regionalist tendencies by multi-ethnic artists (from the
early 1980s up to the present time)
e)
Artistic approaches that may be considered Post-Formalist
and Post-Modernist (from the late 1980s up to the present
time)
This is a tentative way of studying some of the significant
developments within the modern art movement in Malaysia.
Methodological approaches, more relevant to the Malaysian multi-
2
he first western art historian to point out the dilemma of accounting for
modernist art developments in non-Western societies was Claire Holt. In her pioneering book,
Art in Indonesia Continuities and Change
(Cornell University Press, 1967) Holt stated: When
I began to organize my collected data, it became clear to me that the revolutionary changes which
had occurred in the arts of post-war Indonesia could only be discussed meaningfully in historical
perspective.
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cultural situation, continue to be worked out and tested by local art
historians. Much thought has, in recent years, been given to discussing
the wider historical, political, ethnic, religious, socio-economic and
psychological factors rather than formalistic, stylistic analysis alone.
Given the polyglot, multi-cultural nature of the modern Malaysian
societal matrix, it may be posited that the artistic tendency toward
eclectic proclivities and cultural synthesis in creativity has been a
recurring feature in modern Malaysian art practices. Decades before
terms such as cultural pluralism , hybridity , multiculturalism and
regionalism had become fashionable post-modernist terms in the
West, modern Malaysian artists had already confronted and addressed
them in their creative approaches.
Regionalist tendencies immediately preceding independence
from 1945 to the end of the 1950s):
Modernist art activity in the then British Malaya only began
seriously with the arrival in Singapore of a small group of Chinese
migr modern artists who had chosen to leave mainland China in the
years prior to the impending communist takeover. This group of artists
was responsible for privately starting the first art college, in British
Malaya in 1938, called the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA).
The main teaching staff included Lim Hak Tai, Cheong Soo Pieng,
Georgette Chen, Chen Wen Hsi and Chen Chong Swee, who were
active in the post-war years. Having been trained in the
beaux arts
type
art academies prevalent in China during the 1930s, these migr artists
had had as their teachers an older generation of Chinese and Japanese
artists, who had gone to France during the first decades of this century
to imbibe the modernist idioms of the School of Paris. These first
generation NAFA migr artists had also been exposed to the
tumultuous cultural and intellectual upheavals in China during the pre-
war era. The training afforded in these mainland pre-war Chinese
modern art academies had been founded upon both traditional Chinese
painting techniques and School of Paris idioms which included
Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Fauvist and Cubist techniques.
The teaching approach at the NAFA, rendered in Mandarin, to
school leavers from the Malayan Chinese secondary schools, was
imitative of the Chinese pre-war model. These migr teachers
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succeeded in nurturing a second generation of local-born Chinese
artists, many of whom continued their studies at the Ecole des Beaux
Arts academy in Paris. The kind of cultural experimentations attempted
by Nanyang artists, which was a fusion of Western and Far Eastern
influences, plus the use of local and regional subject-matter, was to
lead to the now well-recognized Nanyang style. The artists worked
within the representational mode, producing landscapes, genre scenes
and still-lifes. Their eclectic experimentations bore a sophistication and
complexity hitherto absent in Malaya. The Nanyang approach to the
still-life, fusing Chinese and Western influences, is evident in Georgette
Chens
Nasturtium
1947. The flattened and airy aerial pictorial
construct is derived from Chinese painting whereas the bold colours,
strong outlines and shifting perspective views are indicative of Parisian
influences. Lai Foong Mois
Morning in the Kampung
1959
incorporates a long, vertical pictorial format derived from Far Eastern
hanging scroll painting, the painterly techniques and colours of Post-
Impressionism and Malay subject-matter. The search for appropriate
regional figure-types was evident in Cheong Soo Piengs innovative
stylizations derived from the tribal sculptures of Southeast Asia. The
Nanyang artists multi-cultural approach is best epitomised by Cheong
Soo Piengs
Tropical Life
1959
Figure 1)
which reveals the use of
Chinese rice-paper as a ground, the admixture of Chinese ink and
Western gouache techniques and the rendering of stylized native figure-
types displaying Cubistic treatment. The stylized Malay figures have
been isolated into space cells by the vertical tree trunks and the
Figure 1:
Cheong Soo Pieng :
Tropical Life
1959
Chinese inks and gouache on rice paper, 76 cm x 44 cm.
Collection: National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
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picture format, which is derived from the Chinese horizontal handscroll,
allows for a left-to-right or right-to-left reading. Peripheral vision so
central to Far Eastern traditional painting is reinforced in this eclectic
modernist work. The contributions made by the pioneering Nanyang
artists to modern Malaysian art reflected innovative experimentations
peculiar to a group of Chinese diaspora artists attempting to construct
and propose a multi-cultural Nanyang (Southern Seas) or Southeast
Asian artistic identity via experimental pictorial schemas. Issues of
cultural context and artistic identity would, in any case, become
increasingly important considerations within the local art scene after
the timely appearance of the Nanyang artists
.
Artistic conditions prevailing on mainland Malaya during the
1950s were marked by the emergence of a number of amateur art
groups in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. In response to the new winds of
change, self-taught artists attempted to project a notion of Malayan
cultural identity by employing localized subject-matter within a wide
array of styles and techniques. The approaches were again
representational and drew inspiration directly from everyday situations,
the folk culture, regional mythologies and past cultural traditions. This
is discernible in Nik Zainal Abidins
Wayang Kulit
series where the
astute juxtapositioning of the colourful Kelantanese
wayang
shadow
puppets, within a flattened two-dimensional pictorial space, resulted
in decorativeness peculiar to Malay and regional sensibilities. Patrick
Ngs Spirits of the Earth Sky and Water
1959 is an ambitious and
eclectic work celebrating the vitalistic forces of nature and incorporated
elements derived from traditional Balinese painting and the
ketchak
dance as well as Malay, and Khmer cultural influences. The
demarcation of the composition into three symbolic zones (i.e. the sky,
the earth and the watery realm) was derived from the tribal cosmologies
of Southeast Asia. This ambitious and complex work echoed a regional
predilection for tight surface decoration, spiritual nuances and eclectic
cultural tendencies
Figure 2).
3
For a further discussion of the Nanyang artist see:
Retrospective Pelukis-pelukis Nanyang
exhibition catalogue), National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1979. Refer also: T.K. Sabapathy
& Redza Piyadasa:
Modern Artists of Malaysia
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kuala Lumpur 1983;
Kwok Kian Chow:
Channels And Confluences Art in Singapore
Singapore Art Museum,
Singapore, 1994 and Ushiroshoji Masaharu (ed.):
The Birth of Modern Art in Southeast Asia
Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, 1998.
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Figure 2:
Patrick Ng Kah Onn:
Spirit of Earth Sky and Water
1958
Oil on board, 137 cm x 1 22 cm,
Collection : National Art Gallery, Kuala
Lumpur
The introduction of contemporary batik painting also dates back
to the 1950s. The traditional batik technique had been employed in the
region for centuries in the making of textiles. New appropriations of
the technique to the fine art context started with a self-taught artist,
Chuah Thean Teng, around 1951. Tengs
Fruit Season
1967
figure
3)
is an example of the artists masterful manipulation of stylized
figure-types, crackled decorative textures and warm colours. Teng
spawned a small number of exponents of the medium, namely Tay Mo-
Leong, Khalil Ibrahim and Yan Shook Leong who emerged during the
1960s. Batik paintings, celebrated and hailed at that time as a genuine
Malayan cultural art form, had allowed for a sense of cultural identity
and continuity.
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Figure
3: Chuah Thean Teng :
Fruit Season
1967
Batik painting,
87 cm x 57 cm.
Collection:
National Art Gallery,
Kuala Lumpur.
On another level, aspects of the everyday reality were rendered
via the naturalistic mode by Hoessein Enas, Mazli Matsom, Dzulkifli
Buyong, Ahmad Hassan, Chia Yu-Chian, Fung Yow Cheok and others.
These figurative artists had allowed for a semblance of place-ness
and had reflected a regional pertinence as well. This earlier interest in
the representational mode and the conscious employing of traditional
regional cultural influences and facets of the everyday Malaysian
reality would, however, be overlooked for a time, with the emergence
of a new
avant-
garde
group of overseas-trained Malaysian artists.
These artists would connect themselves to contemporary international
art movements and become involved with abstract, non-objective art
practices which were internationally popular at that time.
The move toward international
avant-garde
orientations
from the late-1950s to the 1970s):
The 1960s and the 1970s witnessed a new sophistication within
the Malaysian art scene with the return of overseas-trained artists who
had imbibed contemporary international idioms at first hand in Europe
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and America. Many of these artists returned home to staff the newly-
opened art colleges and the university art departments which were being
started during the period. Their long years of sojourn in the West had
exposed them to the conceptual underpinnings of the contemporaneous
art movements then popular internationally. The acceptance of the
American-inspired Abstract Expressionist idiom was, in retrospect, a
popular global phenomenon. Its aesthetic was underpinned by highly
individualised, emotive and gestural considerations. Some significant
world-class Malaysian practitioners have emerged. Adoption of this
idiom did not mean mere imitation and conscious attempts were again
made to fuse non-Western elements into the creative process. A
tendency towards syncretization again saw the incorporating of cultural
elements already inherent in the Islamic and Chinese calligraphic
traditions and also the employment of abstracted shapes and forms
evocative of the tropical landscape. Syed Ahmad Jamals
The Bait
1959 and
Tulisan
1960 evoke the immediacy of Chinese and Islamic
calligraphic essences with the colours derived from the tropical
situation
Figure 4).
The further isolation of the swirling shapes on a
white neutral pictorial ground pointed to Chinese painting
influences. Latif Mohidins
Two Standing Figures
1967 from his
famous
Pago-Pago
series reveals a fusion of abstract expressionist and
tribal art impulses.
Figure 4: Syed Ahmad Jamal: The Bait 1959
Oil on board, 154 cm x 122 cm.
Collection: National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
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The Dionysian Abstract Expressionistic approach to creativity
has lingered on. A number of leading practitioners of the idiom, despite
individual preoccupations which range from colour explorations to
tactile surface decorations and tribal art evocations, feature regularly
in local exhibitions. Among these artists are Yeoh Jin Leng, Cheong
Laitong, Sharifah Fatimah Zubir, Awang Damit, Chew Teng Beng,
Fauzan Om ar, A hmad K halid Yusof, Ibrahim H ussein and Yusof G hani.
A second group of overseas-trained abstract artists, working
within a more severe non-emotive approach, were linked to
international neo-Constructivist and Bauhaus-type design concerns.
They afforded a more analytical approach in abstraction. Several of
these artists have moved on to other preoccupations since their initial
appearance in 1969. These New Scene artists laid the foundation for
a systems-oriented approach, advocating a perceptual and
investigative mode of creativity. Redza Piyadasas black and white
Wall
Piece
1966 is an exploration of the extended relief concept,
incorporating elements derived from Cubism, Constructivism and
Kineticism. Choong Kam Kows
Sea Thru
1971 is a construction made
of shaped and cut-out minimalist forms arranged in order to heighten
the reading of actual physical space. Sulaiman Esas
Compression 1972
was an attempt to release the canvas from the customarily framed
confinements thereby forcing attention to the autonomy of its actual
physical and gravitational properties. The total absence of any localized
references in their abstractionist approaches was again very obvious.
The simultaneous adoption of Pop Art influences by a number
of artists during the late 1960s and 1970s was only to be expected given
the new cosmopolitan climate of the arts scene then. Joseph Tans witty
Love Me in My Batik
(1968) projected a wry commentary on the
popularity of batik paintings then and exhibited an inherent eroticism.
Ibrahim Husseins
Are You Alone Out There?
(1969) executed while
the artist was living in New York, was a composite of images culled
from the popular international consumerist mass culture. What was
significant was that Malaysian artists had now embraced a broader
globalised art context, as part of the maturing process. This significant
group of overseas-trained artists had opened up the art scene to
contempory international frames of artistic reference. We may be
reminded that this was the period when Malaysian nation was also
embarking on its industrialisation programme. Issues of growing
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political and ethnic tensions in the new nation-state were, by and large,
ignored by almost all Malaysian artists. Malaysian artists had been
apolitical in their search for artistic directions. An idealized art for
arts sake syndrome, unhampered by any political ideologies, had
prevailed within the multi-racial art scene prior to the historic May 13
incident.
The emergence of Malay nationalistic and pan-Islamic
ideologies among Malay artists
from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s)
The May 13, 1969 racial riots between the Malays and Chinese,
which took place in Kuala Lumpur, lasted for a week and resulted in
several hundreds of deaths. It was a traumatic event for the young
nation. In retrospect, the event may be viewed as a watershed in the
political and cultural history of the post-colonial nation-state. A central
cause was Malay discontent rooted in the lack of economic and
educational opportunities. The New Economic Policy, introduced in he
early 1970s, has, in hindsight, largely redressed the economic
imbalances today and resulted in the emergence of Malay businessmen
and entrepreneurs, academics and professionals in various fields. What
was significant though was the new concerted assertion of Malay polity
and hegemony that witnessed the demarcation of the multicultural
Malaysian populace into the
bumiputeras
(indigenous peoples) and the
non-bumiputeras
(immigrants). A new, far-reaching politicized schism
had been officially introduced which would, henceforth, affect the
Malaysian art scene as well. Artistic approaches in the post-May 13
cultural contexts become affected by the new politicized developments.
Issues of economics, religion, ethnic cultures and ethnic identities
would become increasingly significant.
A major event which followed in the wake of the May 1969 riots
was the First National Cultural Congress sponsored by the government
in Kuala Lumpur in 1971. The need for a more cohesive and unifying
cultural vision for the nation was deemed necessary and the Congress
brought together Malaysian academics, writers, artists, architects,
dramatists and musicians to work out the basis for the new, unifying
national cultural vision. The outcome of this historic gathering was
the resolution that the official National Cultural Policy must be
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founded upon the Malay language and Malay cultural values, including
Islam. The impact of the new national cultural policy, in retrospect,
among creative Malay intellectuals and artists, was a new sense of
pride, introspection and need to re-discover their Malay cultural values,
forms, and aesthetic principles. The initial Malay revivalist movement
that followed in its wake, focused on traditional Malay roots and the
movement took on a special emotional fervour. Many Malay artists,
influenced by the new politicized contexts, began to incorporate
influences derived from traditional Malay sources, reflecting self
conscious ethnic aspirations. Architectural embellishments, motifs from
woven and printed traditional textiles, traditional silverware and
jewellery, and folk art forms, such as the Malay
keris
were appropriated
as new symbols of Malay-ness and Malay hegemony. Also celebrated
were themes derived from Malay history and folk legends, i.e. the Hang
Tuah/Hang Jebat story. Issues of ethnic Malay identitification and
sentiment had become self-consciously introduced within the art scene
for the first time, underpinned by the new revivalist aspirations.
The artistic solutions proposed by the initial Malay-centred
concerns may be discerned in the works of Syed Ahmad Jamal, Ruzaika
Bassaree, Amron Omar, Ponirin Amin, Habibah Zikri, Hashim Hassan,
Mastura Rahman, Sulaiman Esa, Mad Annuar, Siti Zainon Ismail. Syed
Ahmad Jamals celebrations of the legendary, Malay mythical mountain
are reflected in his
Gunung Ledang
series of paintings. Ruzaika
Bassarees
Dungun Series
wall constructions utilized discarded
architectural embellishments from old Malay houses. Amron Omars
celebration of the Malay
Silat
self defence form, rendered realistically,
was another approach. Syed Ahmad Jamals and Habibah Zikris use
of the Songket
textile technique and traditional motifs afforded new
technical experimentations, not unlike the earlier interest in batik
paintings. Mastura Rahmans and Syed Shaharuddins decorative
abstract compositions alluded to decorative essences that may be read
as being both Malay and also regional. The artistic approaches were
varied but there was an underlying desire and attempt to consciously
project a Malay cultural ethos and a Malay-centred cultural identity,
echoing the new Malay nationalistic cultural contexts of the post-
Congress deliberations.
That all Malays in Malaysia are also Muslims is especially
significant as the notion of Malay identity is also inextricably linked
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to the Islamic religion as well. It is worth noting that the new Malay
revivalist proclivities had appeared during the 1970s, at a time when
a new global pan-Islamic resurgence was being advocated by Islamist
intellectuals in many Islamic countries. The government had begun its
Islamisation process during the 1970s. The success of the Iranian
revolution in 1978 was a further factor that affected Malay artists in
their attempts to define issues of ethnic identity. By the early 1980s,
the initial Malay search for roots had become enmeshed with Islamic
idealism and fervour in the case of several of the Malay artists. (The
Islamist factors had also affected the Malay writers, poets and
academics as well, who called for a moralistic
Sastera Islam
or Islamic
literature.) An outcome of the new religious fervour was a systematic
re-questioning of Western-centred values and ideas founded upon
humanistic and secularized values. Modernity was now viewed by the
Malay/Islamists as essentially decadent, being founded upon existential
and materialistic values. The idea of modernism in the arts was viewed
as a danger to the God-centred belief structure of the Islamic world-
view, with its strict moralistic code of existence founded upon the
Koran and the
Hadith.
The ensuing tensions faced by many Malay
visual artists in the face of these new Islamist developments resulted
in a rejection of the Western-centred modernist art paradigm founded
upon a notion of individualistic vision and secularised art contexts. A
new cultural paradigm had to be found. (There are clearly
deconstructive tendencies to be detected here. Relationships with the
supposedly materialistic and God-less Euro-American art centres and
their artistic values had become issues of cultural contestation.) The
rallying call among the more strident Malay/Islamist artists was for a
non-figurative, symbolic art that would fulfil the same role as the
great Islamic religious art traditions of the past. The result was a
closed discourse approach to creativity centred around Islamic
spiritual, moralistic values and past civilizational glories. Abstractionist
pursuits, largely founded on Islamic design values, were promoted in
earnest and any involvement with the actual Malay social-cultural
reality and any figurative art pursuits were, as such, eschewed.
The Malay/Islamic revivalism witnessed a predictable
preoccupation with Islamic calligraphy and several artists have, as
expected, employed the ubiquitous Arabic script in their experiments.
An artist who used the Arabic Jawi
script consistently as a means of
creating textured decorative effects to activate the pictorial surface
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was Ahmad Khalid Yusof. Zakaria Awangs
Seven Wonders
1986 is a
sculpture made of seven spliced pieces of wood, on each of which was
written an Islamic verse. The idea of religious talismans is evoked. The
other artists who featured prominently in this new Malay/Islamic
revivalist phase were Sulaiman Esa, Ponirin Amin, Raja Zahabuddin
Yaacob, Hamzun Harun, Noraini Nasir, and Khatijah Sanusi among
others. Sulaiman Esa, arguably one of the most ideologically committed
advocates of the Islamist cause, used traditional Malay materials such
as bamboo strips, silver and gold threads, translucent colours and
traditional symbolic Arab/Islamic abstract geometric designs in his
Tauhid
series which dealt with metaphysical symbolisms pertaining to
the unity of God, in this case, Allah a unity in multiplicity and
multiplicity in unity
Figure 5).
In looking back at the Islamised
aspect of the post-Congress Malay revivalist development, we may be
reminded that these efforts were also linked to an idealised and
sentimentalized attempt to invoke the glories of the Arab-Islamic past.
That the artistic productions of the Malay/Islamist revivalist artists,
underpinned by overt religious considerations, were paradoxically
exhibited within the secular confines of the modern art gallery and the
modern art museum contexts rather than in specifically religious
environments or contexts, is a moot point worth reconsidering, in
hindsight. These Islamistinspired art work s had, nevertheless, mirrored
Figure 5:
Sulaiman
Esa :
Nurani
1983
Acrylic and mixed media, 150 cm x 150 cm.
Collection : National ARt Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
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the growing Islamisation process in the country and the recurring call,
made by the more extremist Islamists, for the establishment of a
theocratic Islamic state in multi-cultural, multi-religious Malaysia
4
.
Neo-regionalist tendencies in Malaysian art
from the early 1980s onwards)
The re-emergence of regionalist tendencies in Malaysian art from
the early 1980s onwards may be viewed as embodying two particular
aspects : (a) a reconsideration of the total Malaysian reality in the face
of rapid industrialization processes and (b) a move on the part of
several artists toward a broader Southeast Asian regional identification.
The new intra-regionalist interests can be traced to the growing
importance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN,
founded in 1967. The rapid industrialization and urbanization processes
in this country have resulted in the dislocation of an earlier way of
life and numbers of artists have turned to the countrys immediate past
and history for their subject matter. A nostalgia for the vanishing
scene has brought with it a new consciousness of the inherent
uniqueness of modern Malaysias rich multicultural heritage. Several
artists have chosen to project works celebrating the countrys different
ethnic groups, its unique multi-ethnic environments and its rich and
diverse heritage of cultural forms. That the artists involved in this
ongoing neo-regionalist development are non-political and drawn from
all the ethnic groups, inclusive of many Malays, is interesting as they
have acted as a counterpoint to the politicized, ethno-centred Malay/
Islamist proclivities discussed above. Among these Neo-regionalist
artists are Ismail Hashim, Redza Piyadasa, Eric Penis, Tan Choon Ghee,
Long Thien Shih, Nirmala Shanmughalingam, Haron Mokhtar, Kok
Yew Puah, Johan Marjunid, Victor Chin, Ismail Latiff, Kelvin Chap,
Fatimah Chik and Chang Fee Ming among others. The notion of place-
ness as well as regional cultural commonalities, popular during the
4
For an analysis of the Malay / Islamist artistic development in Malaysia refer: Zainol Shariff:
Towards An Alter-Native Vision: The Idea of Art Since 1980 in T.K. Sabapathy (ed.)
Vision
and Idea Relooking Modern Malaysian Art
and Redza Piyadasa: Mendefinisikan
Nasionalisme in
Rupa Malaysia: Meninjau Senilukis Moden Malaysia
2001. See also:
Sulaiman Esa:
Ke arah Tauhid
(exhibition catalogue) 1984 and Hani Ahmad (ed.):
Art and
Spirituality
(exhibition catalogue), National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1995;
Seni dan
Kosmologi
National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1996.
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earlier 1950s and 1960s, are once again re-introduced in Malaysian art
through their artistic productions.
Figure 6:
Ismail Hashim :
Barber Shop
1986
Hand-tinted photograph, 47 cm x 45 cm.
Collection: National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
Ismail Hashims hand-tinted photographic works, exemplified by
his
Barber Shop
1985,
Figure 6)
have depicted environments already
beginning to disappear. Eric Peris, another artist/photographer, has
documented the abandoned tin mines and grand old mansions of the
past in their present state of decay, in his
Annicha
series (1983). Tan
Choon Ghees depictions of the older urban environments of Penang
are reflected in his watercolours. Linked to the neo-regionalist
aspirations is the use made by some artist of issues and motifs derived
from the Southeast Asian context. Nirmala Shanmughalingam has
highlighted the plight of the endangered tribal peoples of the tropical
rainforests.
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Kelvin Chap has celebrated the Dayak tribal cultures and
mythologies of Sarawak (Figure 7). Chang Fee Mengs realistic
watercolour depictions of rural Southeast Asian environments and its
peoples is yet another example. Fatimah Chiks use of symbolic motifs
derived from the rich tribal cultures of the whole region in her abstract,
decorative batik paintings reiterate regional contexts and shared cultural
commonalities.
Figure
7: Kelvin Chap Kok Leong :
Belawing Keramen Mamat
1995.
Mixed media, 188 cm x 177 cm.
Collection: National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
Post-Formalist and Post-Modernist artistic developments
from the mid-1970s up to the present time)
Malaysian artists only began to be concerned with post-modernist
approaches on a serious basis during the 1990s with the emergence of
new generation of younger artists who have imbibed the underpinnings
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of the new art making approaches. An earlier forerunner of the
deconstructing approach, which re-questioned the hierarchic Western
formalistic Painting/Sculpture dichotomy, was the
Towards A Mystical
Reality
exhibition of 1974, jointly initiated by Redza Piyadasa and
Sulaiman Esa. This non-artifactual exhibition, was geared toward a
deliberate confrontational stance. The exhibition was made up of
randomly collected found objects displayed within the confines of an
art gallery. A lengthy polemical manifesto (20 pages) was distributed
and the two artists re-questioned underlying assumptions pertaining to
(a) previously unquestioned Western-centred modes of perceiving
reality (b) notions pertaining to ego-centred preoccupations in
creativity, founded on humanist and individualised considerations and
(c) concepts of space and time founded on western-inspired centralised
vision. Borrowing from Daoist and Zen philosophy they proposed
alternative ways of appreciating reality and advocated non-western
modes of thinking. The noted Malaysian critic and dramatist Krishen
Jit has described in 1989 that the 1974
Mystical Reality
exhibition was
the first Malaysian post-modernist installation art-cum-performance
event by virtue of its deconstructing and rejecting the Euro-American
artistic paradigm. Both artists had called for Asian artists to re-discover
their Asian philosophies in order to counteract western intellectual
hegemony and domination.
The late Ismail Zains
Digital Collage
exhibition of 1988 adopted
a different approach and was notable for the use of non-personalised,
non-emotive art making approaches. His computerized, imagistic print
outs proposed a multi-cultural and globalised cultural context. The
incorporation of well-known iconic images culled from the traditional
arts of Asia and contemporary Asian mass-culture were juxtaposed
together with artistic images and cultural signs derived from all the
worlds cultures, past and contemporary. His
Magic Marker
1986 was
an indictment on cultural censorships
Figure 8).
He had been
influenced by the semiotics of Roland Barthes, Information Theory and
Meta-narrative concerns. Ismail Zains cultural pluralism was one that
clearly transcended the politicised cultural contexts of the nation-state
and embraced the concept of the borderless world . More
significantly, he had opened up a new area of creativity, namely,
electronic art. The exhibitions post-modernist orientations, were
ground breaking. The increasing involvement with electronic art
approaches and multi-media installations by younger post-modernist
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artists such as Wong Hoy Cheong, Hasnul Jamal Saidon, Niranjan
Rajah, Kung Yu Liew, John Hii, Ting Ting Li and others, since the
1990s, have firmly established electronic, multi-media approaches as
a vital area of contemporary artistic exploration.
Figure 8:
Ismail Zain :
The Magic
Marker
1988.
Com puterised print out,
25 cm x 20 cm.
Private collection,
Kuala Lumpur
The growing involvement with postmodernist approaches within
the local art scene, since the 1990s, has introduced a more reflexive
and confrontational mode of creativity geared to the addressing of
political and societal issues. The interest in issues of ethnicity, racial
polarisation, cultural marginalization and ethnic identities can be
viewed as arising from the officially politicised
bumiputera I
non-
bumiputera
societal divide introduced during the 1970s. History,
especially modern Malaysian history, has thus become the new area
of contestation among a number of non-Malay artists. These artists have
re-questioned the exclusive nature of the overtly-politicized
nationalistic master narrative . Wong Hoy Cheongs
Sook Ching
1990 was an attempt to construct a more composite idea of a multi-
racial modern history. His pioneering video film focused solely on an
older generation of Malaysian survivors of the harsh Japanese
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occupation. Survivors, drawn from all the races, both male and female,
were interviewed in his attempt to highlight shared historical trauma
experiences and commonly-experienced shared memories during
World War
II.
During the mid-1990s, he embarked on an ambitious
series of inter-connected black-and-white paintings that formed a
historical narrative and commentary on Malaysian Chinese emigration,
the Chinese diaspora hardships and the Chinese contributions to this
country. His
Of Migrants and Rubber Trees
exhibition (1994) was a
bold and graphic rejoinder, emphasising the undeniable social, cultural
and economic contributions of the Chinese community in the making
of a modern Malaysian nation-state
Figure 9).
Other Chinese artists,
who have consciously highlighted the Chinese point of view and the
Chinese cultural sensitivities via figurative art approaches, since the
1990s, include Tan Chin Kwan, Kung Yu Liew, Eng Hwee Chu, Sylvia
Goh and I-Lan Yee. Similarly, the efforts of the significant Indian artist
J. Anurendra, at self-consciously highlighting Malaysian Indian themes
and issues in his artistic career, is yet another example of the new
projection of particularized ethnic identities and communal histories.
The issues of ethnic identifications and marginalisation have become
significant issues in Malaysian art today. The intra-ethnic problem has
Figure 9:
Wong Hoy Cheong :
She Was Married At 14 And
Had 14 Children
1994
Charcoal on paper,
190 cm x 150 cm.
Collection: National Art
Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
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finally begun to be acknowledged by the multi-ethnic Barisan Nasional-
led government as serious enough to merit some kind of remedial
action. The recent introduction of compulsory National Service Camps,
designed t o bring together present-day Malaysian school leavers of all
races, for extended periods of time, in order to interact and to find
meaningful connections, certainly underlines the complex intra-ethnic
problems prevailing in present-day multi-cultural Malaysia.
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Bibliography
Gomez, Edward Terence. (1999) Tracing the Ethnic Divide: Race,
Rights and Redistribution in Malaysia in
Ethnic Fu tu res The
State and Identity Politics in Asia.
Petaling Jaya: Strategic
Information Research Development.
Karim Raslan. (2002)
Wong Ho y Cheong.
(exhibition catalogue) Kuala
Lumpur: Valentine Willie Fine Arts. See essay Membina
Identiti (2001) in
Rupa Malaysia : Meninjau Senilukis Moden
Malaysia;
and refer: Zainol Shariffs and T.K. Sabapthys.
(1994) essays in T.K. Sabapathy (ed):
Vision and Idea
Relooking Modern Malaysian Art.
Ismail Zain. (1989)
Digital Collage
(exhibition catalogue).
Ismail Zain. (1995)
Ismail Zain Retrospective Exhibition.
Kuala
Lumpur: National Art Gallery.
Niranjan Rajah. (1998) Transcending the Post-Colonial Reflex in
Commonwealth of Art traditions imaginations and independent
nations.
Kuala Lumpur: National Art Gallery.
Redza Piyadasa. (2002)
Rupa Malaysia : Meninjau Senilukis Moden
Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: National Art Gallery.
Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa. (1974)
Towards A Mystical Reality
(exhibition manifesto) Kuala Lumpur. See also Krishen Jits
(1989) country report in the exhibition catalogue of
Third Asian
Art Show
Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan.
Sabapathy, T.K. 199 4)
Vision and Idea Relooking Modern Malays ian
Art.
(ed.) Kuala Lumpur.
(1998) E-Art SEAsia. Kuching: UniMas.
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