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.


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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.


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.


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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Documents

Issues of Culture, Nationhood & Identity in Modern Malaysia Art