#: locale=en
## Action
### URL
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### Description
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album_60B36707_2BC4_A919_41BC_3645937C88A0_6.description = And words were whispered (Hoeing)
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album_60B36707_2BC4_A919_41BC_3645937C88A0_4.description = And words were whispered (Planting)
album_60B36707_2BC4_A919_41BC_3645937C88A0_0.description = And words were whispered (Sitting)
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### Body
htmlText_3815AF66_1E00_7DDF_41AF_DF722A9A2B91.html = Sebidang tanah, sepakat kisah. Di tengah-tengah plot ladang terletak pertumbuhan, kemajuan, dan pasaran terbuka, di mana komoditi tanaman mono menyubur dengan penuh semangat sambil menular bebas merata dunia. Perladangan merupakan enjin pengembangan empayar Eropah, di mana tanaman kontan (cash crop) dihasilkan untuk eksport, dan bagaimana empayar berupaya mengumpul kekayaan berlebih-lebihan. Penulis terawal tentang plot ladang ini telah mengisahkan sebuah epik untuk menguasai dunia, dan cerita rekaan mereka begitu bertalu-talu hingga menjadi sejarah.
Plot ladang ini memerlukan tenaga manusia secara besar-besaran untuk menoreh getah di Tanah Melayu, memotong tebu di Caribbean, dan menanam teh di India dan Sri Lanka. Dengan itu, ia menulis semula geografi manusia, melihat manusia hanya sebagai pembantu kepada monokultur dan ‘menanam’ mereka di bumi asing. Ada yang pergi jauh — buruh Tamil, selalunya sebagai buruh terikat (indentured), telah dipindahkan ke Malaya, Guyana, Afrika Selatan. Yang lain, seperti orang asal Huitoto dan Bora dari kawasan Amazon Peru, telah dirampas tanah mereka dan diperhamba untuk mengutip getah hutan di tanah mereka sendiri.
Lebih enam ratus tahun kemudian, kita masih lagi terperangkap dalam realiti bekaman plot ladang yang menakjubkan. Ladang ini bukan sahaja berterusan, ia membiak di depan batang hidung kita: di Indonesia dan di Malaysia, berjuta hektar hutan dan tanah ladang telah ditebang untuk menanam kelapa sawit. Jika kita tarik balik tirai kilauan perbadanan itu, apa yang tinggal hanyalah raksasa yang meruncing dan dangkal, lapuk serta sangat cetek. Pakatannya ternyata pada ufuk kelapa sawit yang mengiringi lebuhraya kita, getah percha yang memenuhi saluran akar gigi kita, manisan buah yang kita beli dari kedai runcit.
Kita telah mewarisi dunia yang rosak. Jika kita tidak lagi dapat membayangkan dunia tanpa ladang dan kuasa penstrukturannya, maka kita mesti mengenali strategi dan sejarah luar tabiinya, melihat kehadirannya sebagai aneh, dan membuat provokasi estetik dan naratif yang baharu. Plot ceritanya mesti bertambah rumit.
Pameran The Plantation Plot ini menghimpunkan karya 28 orang artis, terutamanya dari Asia Tenggara dan benua Amerika, yang muncul selepas ladang ini mula diusahakan. Mengambil iktibar daripada pengkritik Jamaica Sylvia Wynter, kami mengubah suai plot ladang dalam dua maknanya yang membentuk cerita dan juga tempat. Kisah yang lazimnya diceritakan tentang perladangan adalah plot induk ekonomi politik dan akibatnya kepada manusia. Pameran ini terlebih dahulunya mengambil kira bentuk-bentuk estetik yang muncul dan menular daripada plot induk ekonomi politik ini, menjadi saksi kepada kedua-dua keadaan ngeri di ladang dan keasyikan romantik yang digambarkan. Namun, seni dan afektif bukan hanya produk atau komoditi, yang terhasil daripada realiti ekonomi semata-mata. Justeru, pameran ini menanyakan soalan, apa agaknya yang dapat seni sumbangkan kepada ufuk imaginasi kita, dengan memaparkan karya-karya yang menyediakan landasan deria somatik dari mana ekonomi politik boleh diceritakan semula. Menangani mod afektif yang dilahir, dirosak, dan ditimbangtarakan oleh ladang dan logiknya (atau tidak), The Plantation Plot ini bersifat ‘retrospektif’ (melihat ke belakang), dan pada masa yang sama berjangkakan masa depan yang belum tiba.
Sebidang tanah, sepakat kisah. Di tengah-tengah plot ladang terletak pertumbuhan, kemajuan, dan pasaran terbuka, di mana komoditi tanaman mono menyubur dengan penuh semangat sambil menular bebas merata dunia. Perladangan merupakan enjin pengembangan empayar Eropah, di mana tanaman kontan (cash crop) dihasilkan untuk eksport, dan bagaimana empayar berupaya mengumpul kekayaan berlebih-lebihan. Penulis terawal tentang plot ladang ini telah mengisahkan sebuah epik untuk menguasai dunia, dan cerita rekaan mereka begitu bertalu-talu hingga menjadi sejarah.
Plot ladang ini memerlukan tenaga manusia secara besar-besaran untuk menoreh getah di Tanah Melayu, memotong tebu di Caribbean, dan menanam teh di India dan Sri Lanka. Dengan itu, ia menulis semula geografi manusia, melihat manusia hanya sebagai pembantu kepada monokultur dan ‘menanam’ mereka di bumi asing. Ada yang pergi jauh — buruh Tamil, selalunya sebagai buruh terikat (indentured), telah dipindahkan ke Malaya, Guyana, Afrika Selatan. Yang lain, seperti orang asal Huitoto dan Bora dari kawasan Amazon Peru, telah dirampas tanah mereka dan diperhamba untuk mengutip getah hutan di tanah mereka sendiri.
Lebih enam ratus tahun kemudian, kita masih lagi terperangkap dalam realiti bekaman plot ladang yang menakjubkan. Ladang ini bukan sahaja berterusan, ia membiak di depan batang hidung kita: di Indonesia dan di Malaysia, berjuta hektar hutan dan tanah ladang telah ditebang untuk menanam kelapa sawit. Jika kita tarik balik tirai kilauan perbadanan itu, apa yang tinggal hanyalah raksasa yang meruncing dan dangkal, lapuk serta sangat cetek. Pakatannya ternyata pada ufuk kelapa sawit yang mengiringi lebuhraya kita, getah percha yang memenuhi saluran akar gigi kita, manisan buah yang kita beli dari kedai runcit.
Kita telah mewarisi dunia yang rosak. Jika kita tidak lagi dapat membayangkan dunia tanpa ladang dan kuasa penstrukturannya, maka kita mesti mengenali strategi dan sejarah luar tabiinya, melihat kehadirannya sebagai aneh, dan membuat provokasi estetik dan naratif yang baharu. Plot ceritanya mesti bertambah rumit.
Pameran The Plantation Plot ini menghimpunkan karya 28 orang artis, terutamanya dari Asia Tenggara dan benua Amerika, yang muncul selepas ladang ini mula diusahakan. Mengambil iktibar daripada pengkritik Jamaica Sylvia Wynter, kami mengubah suai plot ladang dalam dua maknanya yang membentuk cerita dan juga tempat. Kisah yang lazimnya diceritakan tentang perladangan adalah plot induk ekonomi politik dan akibatnya kepada manusia. Pameran ini terlebih dahulunya mengambil kira bentuk-bentuk estetik yang muncul dan menular daripada plot induk ekonomi politik ini, menjadi saksi kepada kedua-dua keadaan ngeri di ladang dan keasyikan romantik yang digambarkan. Namun, seni dan afektif bukan hanya produk atau komoditi, yang terhasil daripada realiti ekonomi semata-mata. Justeru, pameran ini menanyakan soalan, apa agaknya yang dapat seni sumbangkan kepada ufuk imaginasi kita, dengan memaparkan karya-karya yang menyediakan landasan deria somatik dari mana ekonomi politik boleh diceritakan semula. Menangani mod afektif yang dilahir, dirosak, dan ditimbangtarakan oleh ladang dan logiknya (atau tidak), The Plantation Plot ini bersifat ‘retrospektif’ (melihat ke belakang), dan pada masa yang sama berjangkakan masa depan yang belum tiba.
A plot of land, the plot of a tale. At the heart of the plantation plot was growth, progress, and an open market, where monocrop commodities were planted with zeal and travelled freely across the globe. Plantations were the engine of European imperial expansion, where cash crops were produced for export, and how empires accumulated surplus wealth. The plantation plot’s earliest writers were making an epic to conquer the globe, and their fiction was so relentless that it made history.
The plot demanded large-scale human labour to tap rubber in Malaya, to harvest sugarcane in the Caribbean, to plant tea in India and Sri Lanka. Thus, it rewrote human geographies, treating people as auxiliary to monoculture and ‘planting’ them in foreign lands. Some travelled far — Tamil labourers, often indentured, were transplanted in Malaya, Guyana, South Africa. Others, such as the Huitoto and Bora natives of the Peruvian Amazon, were dispossessed and enslaved to collect wild rubber on their own land.
Over six hundred years later, we are still trapped in the plantation plot’s spellbinding reality. The plantation has not merely persisted, it is multiplying under our very noses: in Indonesia and Malaysia, millions of hectares of forests and farmland have been cleared to plant oil palm. If we pull back the lustre of the corporation, what remains is a lumbering and inefficient colossus, profound in its banality and profoundly banal. The plot is written in the horizons of oil palm that line our highways, the gutta percha rubber that fills our root canals, the fruits we buy from the grocery store.
We have inherited a broken world. If we can no longer imagine a world absent of the plantation and its structuring power, then we must recognise its strategies and unnatural histories, make its presence strange, and make aesthetic and narrative provocations anew. The plot must thicken.
The Plantation Plot assembles the work of 28 artists and collectives, primarily from Southeast Asia and the Americas, that emerged in the wake of the plantation. Taking our cue from Jamaican critic Sylvia Wynter, we refigure the plantation plot in its co-constituting dual meaning of story and of place. The story often told of the plantation is the master plot of political economy and its human consequences. This exhibition accounts for the aesthetic forms that materialise and circulate from this master plot of political economy, bearing witness both to the plantation’s horrors and the romance with which it has been depicted. Yet, art and affect are not mere products or commodities of economic reality. Thus, the exhibition asks what art might offer our imaginative horizons, displaying artworks that provide a somatic, sensory ground from which political economies can be retold. Attending to the affective modes birthed, damaged, and arbitrated by plantations and their (non-)logics, The Plantation Plot is both retrospective and anticipates a future yet to arrive.
A plot of land, the plot of a tale. At the heart of the plantation plot was growth, progress, and an open market, where monocrop commodities were planted with zeal and travelled freely across the globe. Plantations were the engine of European imperial expansion, where cash crops were produced for export, and how empires accumulated surplus wealth. The plantation plot’s earliest writers were making an epic to conquer the globe, and their fiction was so relentless that it made history.
The plot demanded large-scale human labour to tap rubber in Malaya, to harvest sugarcane in the Caribbean, to plant tea in India and Sri Lanka. Thus, it rewrote human geographies, treating people as auxiliary to monoculture and ‘planting’ them in foreign lands. Some travelled far — Tamil labourers, often indentured, were transplanted in Malaya, Guyana, South Africa. Others, such as the Huitoto and Bora natives of the Peruvian Amazon, were dispossessed and enslaved to collect wild rubber on their own land.
Over six hundred years later, we are still trapped in the plantation plot’s spellbinding reality. The plantation has not merely persisted, it is multiplying under our very noses: in Indonesia and Malaysia, millions of hectares of forests and farmland have been cleared to plant oil palm. If we pull back the lustre of the corporation, what remains is a lumbering and inefficient colossus, profound in its banality and profoundly banal. The plot is written in the horizons of oil palm that line our highways, the gutta percha rubber that fills our root canals, the fruits we buy from the grocery store.
We have inherited a broken world. If we can no longer imagine a world absent of the plantation and its structuring power, then we must recognise its strategies and unnatural histories, make its presence strange, and make aesthetic and narrative provocations anew. The plot must thicken.
The Plantation Plot assembles the work of 28 artists and collectives, primarily from Southeast Asia and the Americas, that emerged in the wake of the plantation. Taking our cue from Jamaican critic Sylvia Wynter, we refigure the plantation plot in its co-constituting dual meaning of story and of place. The story often told of the plantation is the master plot of political economy and its human consequences. This exhibition accounts for the aesthetic forms that materialise and circulate from this master plot of political economy, bearing witness both to the plantation’s horrors and the romance with which it has been depicted. Yet, art and affect are not mere products or commodities of economic reality. Thus, the exhibition asks what art might offer our imaginative horizons, displaying artworks that provide a somatic, sensory ground from which political economies can be retold. Attending to the affective modes birthed, damaged, and arbitrated by plantations and their (non-)logics, The Plantation Plot is both retrospective and anticipates a future yet to arrive.
Today will take care of tomorrow
Anthropologist Anna Tsing writes of plantations, “One ingredient is missing: they remove the love.” Against totalitarian monoculture — an idea borne from the plantation but broadly applicable in a homogenising culture of consumerism — the works in this section choose to be rooted in cultural, geographic, and historical specificity. Expansive, sensorial, and vital, they bring back a notion of care.
The title of this section is borrowed from the title of Pratchaya Phinthong’s video, which is in turn borrowed from the poet Paul Malimba. It proclaims a simple yet radical ethos: today will take care of tomorrow. These works point the way toward a world that embraces interdependence and rejects centres of power, where plants, humans, and animals are connected in an ecology of mutuality and contingent on each other’s agencies. These works observe the conditions before us not as set, but as potential sites of transformation. It is a reminder that remaking the world around us is not the exclusive domain of the all-dominating plantation power.
Ahli antropologi Anna Tsing menulis tentang ladang, “Suatu bahan tidak ada: mereka buangkan cinta.” Menentang monokultur totalitarian — idea yang diperoleh daripada perladangan tetapi boleh digunakan secara meluas dalam budaya kepenggunaan yang menyeragamkan — karya dalam bahagian ini memilih untuk tumbuh daripada kekhususan budaya, geografi dan sejarah. Luas, berderia, dan penting, ia memberi balik rasa kasih sayang.
Tajuk bahagian ini dipinjam daripada tajuk video Pratchaya Phinthong (yang dipinjam daripada penyair Paul Malimba), yang menyatakan etos mudah tetapi radikal: hari ini akan mengurus esok. Karya bahagian ini menunjuk jalan ke arah dunia yang menyanjung usaha saling bergantungan dan menolak kuasa pusat, di mana tumbuh-tumbuhan, manusia dan haiwan berkait dalam ekologi kesamaan dan bergantung pada daya agensi masing-masing. Karya-karya ini melihat keadaan di depan kita bukan sebagai kekal, sebaliknya sebagai tapak potensi transformasi. Ianya suatu peringatan bahawa membentuk semula dunia keliling kita bukanlah bidang kuasa eksklusif pihak ladang yang serba dominan.
The Plantation Plot
Allora & Calzadilla
Asli Çavuşoğlu
Bakudapan Food Study Group
Catriona Maddocks & Gindung McFeddy Simon
Chang Yoong Chia
Chuah Thean Teng
Cian Dayrit
Connie Zheng
Corey McCorkle
Diane Severin Nguyen
Gogularaajan Rajendran
Inauk S. Gullah
Izat Arif
Joydeb Roaja
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
Khvay Samnang
Kuo Ju Ping
Minia Biabiany
Minstrel Kuik
Nguyễn Phương Linh
Noara Quintana
Pratchaya Phinthong
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
Santiago Yahuarcani
Sg. Bumbun × Pulau Kempas × AWAS!MAWAS!
Taloi Havini
Tay Mo-Leong
Yong Mun Sen
The Plantation Plot is presented by
ILHAM Gallery in collaboration with KADIST.
Curated by Lim Sheau Yun.
20 APRIL — 21 SEPTEMBER 2025
The Plantation Plot
Allora & Calzadilla
Asli Çavuşoğlu
Bakudapan Food Study Group
Catriona Maddocks & Gindung McFeddy Simon
Chang Yoong Chia
Chuah Thean Teng
Cian Dayrit
Connie Zheng
Corey McCorkle
Diane Severin Nguyen
Gogularaajan Rajendran
Inauk S. Gullah
Izat Arif
Joydeb Roaja
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
Khvay Samnang
Kuo Ju Ping
Minia Biabiany
Minstrel Kuik
Nguyễn Phương Linh
Noara Quintana
Pratchaya Phinthong
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
Santiago Yahuarcani
Sg. Bumbun × Pulau Kempas × AWAS!MAWAS!
Taloi Havini
Tay Mo-Leong
Yong Mun Sen
The Plantation Plot is presented by
ILHAM Gallery in collaboration with KADIST.
Curated by Lim Sheau Yun.
20 APRIL — 21 SEPTEMBER 2025
The Plantation Plot
Allora & Calzadilla
Asli Çavuşoğlu
Bakudapan Food Study Group
Catriona Maddocks & Gindung McFeddy Simon
Chang Yoong Chia
Chuah Thean Teng
Cian Dayrit
Connie Zheng
Corey McCorkle
Diane Severin Nguyen
Gogularaajan Rajendran
Inauk S. Gullah
Izat Arif
Joydeb Roaja
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
Khvay Samnang
Kuo Ju Ping
Minia Biabiany
Minstrel Kuik
Nguyễn Phương Linh
Noara Quintana
Pratchaya Phinthong
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
Santiago Yahuarcani
Sg. Bumbun × Pulau Kempas × AWAS!MAWAS!
Taloi Havini
Tay Mo-Leong
Yong Mun Sen
The Plantation Plot is presented by
ILHAM Gallery in collaboration with KADIST.
Curated by Lim Sheau Yun.
20 APRIL — 21 SEPTEMBER 2025
Allora & Calzadilla
(based in Puerto Rico)
Returning a Sound
2004
Single-channel video, colour, sound,
5 min 42 sec
Courtesy the artists, KADIST collection
Artist’s Collection
In Returning a Sound, the artist duo Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla switch out the muffler on a motorcycle for a trumpet. An activist named Homar drives the motorcycle around the island of Vieques, off the mainland of Puerto Rico, blaring long, brassy notes of victory: in 2002, after years of civil disobedience and protest, activists had successfully ousted the U.S. Navy and NATO, who had been using Vieques as a military testing ground since the 1940s. Residents, living near American bombing ranges, would be subjected to ear-splitting detonations up to 250 days in a year. Filmed on former military land just after it was semi-opened to the public in 2003, the motorcycle- trumpet becomes an instrument of reclamation, announcing decontamination and recovery in echo of the blistering explosions that had shaped the lives of Vieques’s inhabitants for six decades.
Dalam Returning a Sound, pasangan artis Jennifer Allora dan Guillermo Calzadilla menggantikan peredam motosikal dengan sebuah trumpet. Homar, seorang aktivis, menunggang motosikal itu sekitar pulau Vieques, berhampiran tanah besar Puerto Rico, melantangkan bunyi-bunyi nyaringan panjang kemenangan: pada tahun 2002, setelah bertahun-tahun menjalankan keingkaran awam dan protes, para aktivis berjaya mengusir Tentera Laut A.S. dan NATO yang menjadikan Vieques sebagai kawasan ujian ketenteraan sejak 1940-an. Penduduk yang tinggal berdekatan padang bom Amerika ditulikan dengan bunyi ledakan membingit mencecah 250 hari kejadian setahun. Bekas tanah tentera yang separa dibuka kepada orang awam pada tahun 2003 menjadi tempat perfilemannya, motosikal-trumpet menjadi alat tuntutan semula, mengisytihar penyahcemaran dan pemulihan dalam sisa gaungan letupan bingit yang telah membentuk kehidupan penduduk Vieques selama enam dekad.
Aslı Çavuşoğlu
(b. 1982, Turkey)
Mesopotamia Women’s Cooperative
2020
Silk-screen print with spirulina and madder on organic cotton voile dyed with camomile
84 cm × 147 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
In 2013, protests erupted in Istanbul, Turkey, over plans to redevelop Gezi Park, one of the last green spaces in its area. In its aftermath, people created urban guerilla gardens, worked on preserving historic ones, and some even established farming initiatives in rural Turkey, all advocating for sustainable and community-supported agriculture. Aslı Çavuşoğlu’s works, part of a larger series of textiles, draws from two of these initiatives, proposing forms of resistance through kinship, solidarity, and community. Each fabric is dyed with a pigment from their harvest, bringing agricultural harvest into a language of colour. As such, each piece serves as an archive of these initiatives, a testament to everyday resistance. Choosing how we relate to the food we consume, and therefore to each other, is a deeply political act.
Tahun 2013, protes meletus di Istanbul, Turki akibat rancangan untuk membangun semula Taman Gezi, salah satu kawasan hijau di persekitarannya. Hasilnya, orang ramai membangun kebun urban gerila, memelihara yang sudah lama ada, dan sesetengahnya malah mengusahakan amalan perkebunan di ceruk Turki. Semuanya memperjuang pertanian lestari dan didukung komuniti. Karya Aslı Çavuşoğlu merupakan sebahagian daripada siri lebih besar tentang tekstil, yang diilhamkan daripada dua usahasama ini, membentang bentuk tentangan melalui persaudaraan, kebersamaan dan kemasyarakatan. Setiap fabrik diwarnakan dengan pigmen dari hasil tuaian mereka, membawa tuaian pertanian mewarnai bahasa rona. Melaluinya, setiap helaian menjadi arkib para usahasama ini, saksi akan tentangan sehari-hari. Jalan apa yang kita pilih untuk berkait dengan makanan yang kita hadam dan dengan satu sama lain ialah satu tindakan yang penuh politiknya.
Aslı Çavuşoğlu
(b. 1982, Turkey)
The Devrek Sun Agricultural Development Cooperative
2020
Handloom with linen dyed with buckthorn,
madder and embroidery with oak apple
46 cm × 205 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
In 2013, protests erupted in Istanbul, Turkey, over plans to redevelop Gezi Park, one of the last green spaces in its area. In its aftermath, people created urban guerilla gardens, worked on preserving historic ones, and some even established farming initiatives in rural Turkey, all advocating for sustainable and community-supported agriculture. Aslı Çavuşoğlu’s works, part of a larger series of textiles, draws from two of these initiatives, proposing forms of resistance through kinship, solidarity, and community. Each fabric is dyed with a pigment from their harvest, bringing agricultural harvest into a language of colour. As such, each piece serves as an archive of these initiatives, a testament to everyday resistance. Choosing how we relate to the food we consume, and therefore to each other, is a deeply political act.
Tahun 2013, protes meletus di Istanbul, Turki akibat rancangan untuk membangun semula Taman Gezi, salah satu kawasan hijau di persekitarannya. Hasilnya, orang ramai membangun kebun urban gerila, memelihara yang sudah lama ada, dan sesetengahnya malah mengusahakan amalan perkebunan di ceruk Turki. Semuanya memperjuang pertanian lestari dan didukung komuniti. Karya Aslı Çavuşoğlu merupakan sebahagian daripada siri lebih besar tentang tekstil, yang diilhamkan daripada dua usahasama ini, membentang bentuk tentangan melalui persaudaraan, kebersamaan dan kemasyarakatan. Setiap fabrik diwarnakan dengan pigmen dari hasil tuaian mereka, membawa tuaian pertanian mewarnai bahasa rona. Melaluinya, setiap helaian menjadi arkib para usahasama ini, saksi akan tentangan sehari-hari. Jalan apa yang kita pilih untuk berkait dengan makanan yang kita hadam dan dengan satu sama lain ialah satu tindakan yang penuh politiknya.
Bakudapan Food Study Group
(based in Indonesia)
Re-plating Mooi Indie
2018
Archival inkjet print on aluminium bond
(exhibition copy)
33 cm × 50 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Under late colonial Dutch rule in Indonesia, mooi indie (“beautiful Indies”) was the aesthetic ideal for depicting landscapes. Mooi Indie was the manner in which Indonesia was represented to the world, captured in souvenir paintings, postcard photographs and dioramas circulated globally by Dutch officials. In 1939, the prominent Indonesian modernist painter S. Sudjojono decried the colonial gaze of the genre, lambasting its “Sacred Trinity” of mountains, coconut trees and rice fields.
With humour, Re-plating Mooi Indie extends Sudjojono’s intellectual tradition, satirising mooi indie while raising awareness of social conditions. Bakudapan Food Study Group appropriates the composition of historical mooi indie images and satirically remakes the image in staple foods. We get tempeh cliffs, broccoli trees, a bok choy waterfall and a vermicelli river. In doing so, Bakudapan criticises the nation-state’s romanticism toward food sovereignty and self-sufficiency, which they call a “new type of mooi indie” that ignores the loss of local knowledge with standardised procedures, monopolies over natural resources, land grabbing, and gaps in food access.
Ketika pemerintahan penjajah Belanda di Indonesia, mooi indie (“Hindia molek”) menjadi estetik ideal untuk menerangkan lanskap. Mooi Indies ialah cara Indonesia dilambangkan kepada dunia, diabadikan dalam lukisan cenderahati, gambar poskad dan diorama yang diedar seluruh dunia oleh pegawai Belanda. Pada tahun 1939, pelukis moden Indonesia yang terkenal, S. Sudjojono mengutuk genre sisi pandang kolonial itu, beliau mengecam “Tiga Sekuncu Suci”nya iaitu gunung-ganang, pokok kelapa dan sawah padi.
Re-plating Mooi Indie telah menyambung tradisi intelektual Sudjojono, dalam jenaka menyindir mooi indie sambil meningkatkan kesedaran akan keadaan sosial. Bakudapan Food Study Group mencedok gubahan imej bersejarah mooi indie dan sambil menyindir mereka cipta semula imej itu menggunakan bahan makanan asas. Kita dapat cerun- cerun tempeh, pokok brokoli, air terjun pak choy dan sungai bihun. Bakudapan mencela negara-bangsa yang meromantisasi kedaulatan makanan dan kemampuan diri menerusi apa yang mereka gelar “jenis baru mooi indie” yang tidak peduli akan lenyapnya pengetahuan tempatan akibat prosedur berpiawai, monopoli keatas sumber semulajadi, rampasan tanah dan jurang-jurang dalam kemudahan makanan.
Catriona Maddocks (b. 1985, United Kingdom, based in Sarawak, Malaysia) and
Gindung McFeddy Simon (b. 1990, Sabah, Malaysia)
Pagar & Padi
2025
Soil from Kampung Kilimu, harvested rice
grains, and two-channel video, colour, sound
8 min 10 sec; 20 min 56 sec
Courtesy of the artist
“Guarantee?” asks the 80-foot piece of land art, spelled out in rice paddy. Since 2022, Catriona Maddocks and Gindung McFeddy Simon have participated in the annual mongomot rice-planting, collaborating with community members of Kampung Kilimu, Simon’s ancestral home in Sabah, to spell the Malay word “Jamin” (“guarantee”) in heritage rice grains.
Pagar & Padi presents the documentation of the third and final edition of their planting. The word “Jamin” references the Keningau Batu Sumpah of 1964, on which a plaque stated that the Malaysian government guaranteed (“jamin”) the rights to freedom of religion, land autonomy and the practice of customs and traditions. These rights, enshrined in words but not practice, are now at risk from more than just the state. Rice planting is no longer economically viable, in part due to the extreme weather patterns caused by global warming: the mound of rice grains in the gallery represents the entirety of Maddocks and Simon’s 2024 “Jamin” harvest. Land use, too, is changing. The plot that Maddocks and Simon used to plant rice in 2022 and 2023 will soon be turned into houses. The question remains: what, now, is guaranteed?
“Jamin?” soal sekeping seni tanah 80 kaki, dieeja dengan beras padi. Sejak tahun 2022, Maddocks dan Simon turut serta dalam acara tahunan menanam padi mongomot, berkerjasama dengan ahli masyarakat Kampung Kilimu, tempat leluhur Simon di Sabah untuk mengeja “Jamin” dengan butiran beras pusaka.
Pagar & Padi memaparkan dokumentasi edisi ketiga dan yang terakhir penanaman mereka. Perkataan “Jamin” merujuk kepada Batu Sumpah Keningau, sebuah plak didirikan pada tahun 1964 yang menyatakan kerajaan Malaysia menjamin kebebasan beragama, penguasaan tanah dan amalan adat istiadat. Hak-hak ini, bersemadi dalam kata namun bukan pada amalnya, kini bukan hanya mengalami risiko dari kerajaan. Penanaman padi tidak lagi secara ekonominya berdaya maju, sebahagiannya bahana pola cuasa melampau disebabkan pemanasan global; timbunan butir padi di dalam galeri merupakan keseluruhan tuaian Maddock dan Simon dari tuaian “Jamin” pada tahun 2024. Penggunaan tanah juga turut berubah. Petak tanah yang Maddock dan Simon kerjakan untuk menanam padi pada tahun 2022 dan 2023 akan bertukar menjadi tapak rumah. Persoalannya masih bermain: apa kini yang dijamin?
Catriona Maddocks (b. 1985, United Kingdom, based in Sarawak, Malaysia) and
Gindung McFeddy Simon (b. 1990, Sabah, Malaysia)
Pagar & Padi
2025
Soil from Kampung Kilimu, harvested rice
grains, and two-channel video, colour, sound
8 min 10 sec; 20 min 56 sec
Courtesy of the artist
“Guarantee?” asks the 80-foot piece of land art, spelled out in rice paddy. Since 2022, Catriona Maddocks and Gindung McFeddy Simon have participated in the annual mongomot rice-planting, collaborating with community members of Kampung Kilimu, Simon’s ancestral home in Sabah, to spell the Malay word “Jamin” (“guarantee”) in heritage rice grains.
Pagar & Padi presents the documentation of the third and final edition of their planting. The word “Jamin” references the Keningau Batu Sumpah of 1964, on which a plaque stated that the Malaysian government guaranteed (“jamin”) the rights to freedom of religion, land autonomy and the practice of customs and traditions. These rights, enshrined in words but not practice, are now at risk from more than just the state. Rice planting is no longer economically viable, in part due to the extreme weather patterns caused by global warming: the mound of rice grains in the gallery represents the entirety of Maddocks and Simon’s 2024 “Jamin” harvest. Land use, too, is changing. The plot that Maddocks and Simon used to plant rice in 2022 and 2023 will soon be turned into houses. The question remains: what, now, is guaranteed?
“Jamin?” soal sekeping seni tanah 80 kaki, dieeja dengan beras padi. Sejak tahun 2022, Maddocks dan Simon turut serta dalam acara tahunan menanam padi mongomot, berkerjasama dengan ahli masyarakat Kampung Kilimu, tempat leluhur Simon di Sabah untuk mengeja “Jamin” dengan butiran beras pusaka.
Pagar & Padi memaparkan dokumentasi edisi ketiga dan yang terakhir penanaman mereka. Perkataan “Jamin” merujuk kepada Batu Sumpah Keningau, sebuah plak didirikan pada tahun 1964 yang menyatakan kerajaan Malaysia menjamin kebebasan beragama, penguasaan tanah dan amalan adat istiadat. Hak-hak ini, bersemadi dalam kata namun bukan pada amalnya, kini bukan hanya mengalami risiko dari kerajaan. Penanaman padi tidak lagi secara ekonominya berdaya maju, sebahagiannya bahana pola cuasa melampau disebabkan pemanasan global; timbunan butir padi di dalam galeri merupakan keseluruhan tuaian Maddock dan Simon dari tuaian “Jamin” pada tahun 2024. Penggunaan tanah juga turut berubah. Petak tanah yang Maddock dan Simon kerjakan untuk menanam padi pada tahun 2022 dan 2023 akan bertukar menjadi tapak rumah. Persoalannya masih bermain: apa kini yang dijamin?
Chang Yoong Chia
(b. 1975, Malaysia)
The Chakra
2013
Postage stamps and polyvinyl acetate glue
(collage)
92.5 cm × 59.5 cm
Courtesy the artist, Bingley Sim & Ima
Norbinsha collection
Stamps are more than proof of payment for postage. Issued by governments, they are images that circulate globally, especially during the 20th century, often used to represent a nation and what that nation holds dear. It is ideological reproduction in miniature form.
Chang Yoong Chia’s The Chakra, composed entirely out of stamps, depicts two Indian workers harvesting latex, a scene would not be out of place on any colonial or national stamp. The chakras of the body, focal points of life energy, are superimposed onto a rubber tree, each represented by a stamp picturing the harvesting and processing of rubber. Together, these chakra points form a timeline of Malaya’s domination over its landscape, from colonial to national. For Chang, collage flips the scale of a stamp, allowing him to assemble miniatures into a gigantic composition through a painstaking process of accumulation. In doing so, he reveals the scale of a stamp’s ambitions, and ability, to represent and stand for a place.
Setem bukan sekadar tanda bayaran untuk kiriman pos. Mereka adalah imej terbitan kerajaan yang beredar ke seluruh dunia, terutamanya pada abad ke-20 apabila digunakan untuk melambangkan negara dan apa yang mereka hargai. Setem adalah penghasilan semula ideologi dalam bentuk mini.
The Chakra oleh Chang Yoong Chia diperbuat sepenuhnya daripada setem, yang mengisahkan dua pekerja India menuai getah, satu babak yang tidak asing lagi dalam mana-mana setem penjajah atau kebangsaan. Cakra tubuh, pusat untuk tenaga kehidupan ditindan ke atas sebuah pokok getah, setiapnya diwakili setem gambar menuai dan memproses getah. Pusat-pusat cakra ini menyatu membentuk garis masa penguasaan Malaya ke atas tanah-tanahnya, dari zaman penjajah hingga kerajaan. Menurut Chang, kolaj membalikkan skala setem, memungkinkan beliau untuk menghimpun benda kecil membentuk gubahan gedang dengan proses rumit untuk mengumpulnya. Dengan ini, beliau mempamerkan skala cita-cita dan keupayaan satu setem untuk mewakili dan menduduki satu ruangan.
Chang Yoong Chia
(b. 1975, Malaysia)
The Chakra
2013
Postage stamps and polyvinyl acetate glue
(collage)
92.5 cm × 59.5 cm
Courtesy the artist, Bingley Sim & Ima
Norbinsha collection
Stamps are more than proof of payment for postage. Issued by governments, they are images that circulate globally, especially during the 20th century, often used to represent a nation and what that nation holds dear. It is ideological reproduction in miniature form.
Chang Yoong Chia’s The Chakra, composed entirely out of stamps, depicts two Indian workers harvesting latex, a scene would not be out of place on any colonial or national stamp. The chakras of the body, focal points of life energy, are superimposed onto a rubber tree, each represented by a stamp picturing the harvesting and processing of rubber. Together, these chakra points form a timeline of Malaya’s domination over its landscape, from colonial to national. For Chang, collage flips the scale of a stamp, allowing him to assemble miniatures into a gigantic composition through a painstaking process of accumulation. In doing so, he reveals the scale of a stamp’s ambitions, and ability, to represent and stand for a place.
Setem bukan sekadar tanda bayaran untuk kiriman pos. Mereka adalah imej terbitan kerajaan yang beredar ke seluruh dunia, terutamanya pada abad ke-20 apabila digunakan untuk melambangkan negara dan apa yang mereka hargai. Setem adalah penghasilan semula ideologi dalam bentuk mini.
The Chakra oleh Chang Yoong Chia diperbuat sepenuhnya daripada setem, yang mengisahkan dua pekerja India menuai getah, satu babak yang tidak asing lagi dalam mana-mana setem penjajah atau kebangsaan. Cakra tubuh, pusat untuk tenaga kehidupan ditindan ke atas sebuah pokok getah, setiapnya diwakili setem gambar menuai dan memproses getah. Pusat-pusat cakra ini menyatu membentuk garis masa penguasaan Malaya ke atas tanah-tanahnya, dari zaman penjajah hingga kerajaan. Menurut Chang, kolaj membalikkan skala setem, memungkinkan beliau untuk menghimpun benda kecil membentuk gubahan gedang dengan proses rumit untuk mengumpulnya. Dengan ini, beliau mempamerkan skala cita-cita dan keupayaan satu setem untuk mewakili dan menduduki satu ruangan.
Chang Yoong Chia
(b. 1975, Malaysia)
The Chakra
2013
Postage stamps and polyvinyl acetate glue
(collage)
92.5 cm × 59.5 cm
Courtesy the artist, Bingley Sim & Ima
Norbinsha collection
Stamps are more than proof of payment for postage. Issued by governments, they are images that circulate globally, especially during the 20th century, often used to represent a nation and what that nation holds dear. It is ideological reproduction in miniature form.
Chang Yoong Chia’s The Chakra, composed entirely out of stamps, depicts two Indian workers harvesting latex, a scene would not be out of place on any colonial or national stamp. The chakras of the body, focal points of life energy, are superimposed onto a rubber tree, each represented by a stamp picturing the harvesting and processing of rubber. Together, these chakra points form a timeline of Malaya’s domination over its landscape, from colonial to national. For Chang, collage flips the scale of a stamp, allowing him to assemble miniatures into a gigantic composition through a painstaking process of accumulation. In doing so, he reveals the scale of a stamp’s ambitions, and ability, to represent and stand for a place.
Setem bukan sekadar tanda bayaran untuk kiriman pos. Mereka adalah imej terbitan kerajaan yang beredar ke seluruh dunia, terutamanya pada abad ke-20 apabila digunakan untuk melambangkan negara dan apa yang mereka hargai. Setem adalah penghasilan semula ideologi dalam bentuk mini.
The Chakra oleh Chang Yoong Chia diperbuat sepenuhnya daripada setem, yang mengisahkan dua pekerja India menuai getah, satu babak yang tidak asing lagi dalam mana-mana setem penjajah atau kebangsaan. Cakra tubuh, pusat untuk tenaga kehidupan ditindan ke atas sebuah pokok getah, setiapnya diwakili setem gambar menuai dan memproses getah. Pusat-pusat cakra ini menyatu membentuk garis masa penguasaan Malaya ke atas tanah-tanahnya, dari zaman penjajah hingga kerajaan. Menurut Chang, kolaj membalikkan skala setem, memungkinkan beliau untuk menghimpun benda kecil membentuk gubahan gedang dengan proses rumit untuk mengumpulnya. Dengan ini, beliau mempamerkan skala cita-cita dan keupayaan satu setem untuk mewakili dan menduduki satu ruangan.
Chuah Thean Teng
(b. 1914, China – d. 2008, Malaysia)
The Huskers
1980
Chinese ink on rice paper
68 cm × 45 cm
Courtesy ILHAM collection
Faced with volatile rubber prices, estateowners in mid-20th century Malaya, such as Mr. Westenholz of Jendarata Estate, today’s United Plantations Bhd, diversified by planting coconuts on newly acquired land. Husking, done to make the coconut easier to handle, transport, and access the inner meat and water, is crucial to large-scale commodity production, yet ironically remained dependent on back breaking manual labour up until 1995, when a coconut husking machine was invented in Kerala. Here, Chuah Thean Teng depicts a lone labourer standing thigh-deep in coconuts, clad only in a loincloth and husking them by hand, using a pointed stake to pierce and strip away the fibrous outer shell. Huskers risk cuts from the sharp edges of their tools and the tough husk, and the repetitive motions required to handle large quantities of coconuts can easily lead to strain or injury. Yet here, the husker merges with the lush backdrop of towering palms, his bowed head and tensed muscles folded into a single abundant sceneevoking Chinese bamboo groves. Body and landscape are both sites of labour.
Berikutan harga getah yang sentiasa bergolak, pemilik estet tengah abad ke-20 Malaya seperti Encik Westenholz dari Jendarata Estate, kini United Plantations Berhad, meluaskan usaha dengan menanam kelapa di tanah yang baru diperoleh. Kupasan sabut dilakukan untuk memudahkan kelapa dikendali, diangkut dan diperoleh isi serta airnya, dan ini penting untuk penghasilan komoditi skala besar. Namun ironinya ia masih bergantung pada kerja kasar yang membebankan, hinggalah pada tahun 1995, apabila mesin mengupas sabut dicipta di Kerala. Chuah Thean Teng menceritakan seorang buruh yang bersendirian berdiri dikelilingi kelapa, dia hanya bercawat dan mengupas sabut dengan tangan menggunakan kayu hujung tajam untuk menusuk dan menanggalkan sabut. Pekerja itu ada risiko untuk terluka dek hujung tajam alatan dan sabut yang tebal. Dia juga cenderung untuk pegal-pegal dan tercedera kerana gerakan yang berulang untuk mengendali timbunan kelapa. Namun disini, dia bersatu dengan latar belakang yang sarat dengan pohon menjulang, kepalanya tertunduk dan otot tegangnya membentuk satu pemandangan tunggal mirip himpunan buluh cina. Tubuh dan persekitaran kedua-duanya menjadi kawasan jerih-perih.
Cian Dayrit (b. 1989, Philippines) in
collaboration with Henricus
Fever Dreams of Progress: Grease of Empire
2025
Brass, embroidery and digital print
on fabric
99.3 cm × 137.5 cm
Courtesy the artist
To map was to represent, and in the eyes of the empire, to represent was to lay claim. In rebuke of colonial knowledge systems where conquest and cartography were intertwined, Cian Dayrit retrieves archival images, dissects them, and maps his own diagrams upon them. The photographs that back these two works date from the period of U.S. occupation of the Philippines (1898–1946). Local communities were displaced, and U.S. corporations took over vast tracts of land under the hacienda system, which persisted from earlier Spanish colonialism. Dayrit narrates a workers’ history in embroidery and objects, arguing in Semi-feudal Order that this system of exploitation and land monopoly remains today; it has merely been coopted by a new order of bureaucratic capitalists, multinational corporations and oligarchs. For Dayrit, mapping is a way to reveal the terra incognita of power, revealing the methods, hierarchies and entities that uphold the structures of hegemony. While the master’s tools may never dismantle the master’s house, old tools may still pick at new masters.
Memeta adalah untuk mewakili, dan di mata empayar, untuk mewakili adalah untuk menuntut hakmilik. Cian Dayrit menebus semula gambar-gambar arkib, meneliti dan melukis diagram ciptaan sendiri ke atasnya untuk mengkritik sistem pengetahuan penjajah yang menyaksikan penaklukan dan pemetaan yang saling berkait. Gambar-gambar yang mendasari dua karya ini bertarikh daripada era pendudukan Amerika di Filipina (1898–1946). Masyarakat tempatan tersisih, dan syarikat-syarikat Amerika mengambil alih kawasan tanah lapang dibawah sistem hacienda yang sudah dijalankan sejak penjajah Sepanyol bertapak. Dayrit mengisahkan kembali sejarah pekerja melalui sulaman dan objek-objek, menerusi Semi-feudal Order beliau mempertikai bahawa sistem eksploitasi dan monopoli tanah ini masih wujud sehingga sekarang; ia kini diserap oleh sebuah order baru kapitalis berbirokrasi, syarikat berbilang negara dan para oligarki. Menurut Dayrit, pemetaan adalah cara untuk mendedahkan daerah sepi kuasa, mendedahkan kaedah, hierarki dan entiti yang mempertahankan struktur hegemoni. Perkakas si tuan sendiri mungkin tidak dapat merobohkan rumahnya, namun perkakas yang lama masih dapat mengecam si tuan yang baru menjelma.
Cian Dayrit (b. 1989, Philippines) in
collaboration with Henricus
Semi-feudal Order
2025
Objects, embroidery and digital print on fabric
130.5 cm × 91 cm
Courtesy the artist
To map was to represent, and in the eyes of the empire, to represent was to lay claim. In rebuke of colonial knowledge systems where conquest and cartography were intertwined, Cian Dayrit retrieves archival images, dissects them, and maps his own diagrams upon them. The photographs that back these two works date from the period of U.S. occupation of the Philippines (1898–1946). Local communities were displaced, and U.S. corporations took over vast tracts of land under the hacienda system, which persisted from earlier Spanish colonialism. Dayrit narrates a workers’ history in embroidery and objects, arguing in Semi-feudal Order that this system of exploitation and land monopoly remains today; it has merely been coopted by a new order of bureaucratic capitalists, multinational corporations and oligarchs. For Dayrit, mapping is a way to reveal the terra incognita of power, revealing the methods, hierarchies and entities that uphold the structures of hegemony. While the master’s tools may never dismantle the master’s house, old tools may still pick at new masters.
Memeta adalah untuk mewakili, dan di mata empayar, untuk mewakili adalah untuk menuntut hakmilik. Cian Dayrit menebus semula gambar-gambar arkib, meneliti dan melukis diagram ciptaan sendiri ke atasnya untuk mengkritik sistem pengetahuan penjajah yang menyaksikan penaklukan dan pemetaan yang saling berkait. Gambar-gambar yang mendasari dua karya ini bertarikh daripada era pendudukan Amerika di Filipina (1898–1946). Masyarakat tempatan tersisih, dan syarikat-syarikat Amerika mengambil alih kawasan tanah lapang dibawah sistem hacienda yang sudah dijalankan sejak penjajah Sepanyol bertapak. Dayrit mengisahkan kembali sejarah pekerja melalui sulaman dan objek-objek, menerusi Semi-feudal Order beliau mempertikai bahawa sistem eksploitasi dan monopoli tanah ini masih wujud sehingga sekarang; ia kini diserap oleh sebuah order baru kapitalis berbirokrasi, syarikat berbilang negara dan para oligarki. Menurut Dayrit, pemetaan adalah cara untuk mendedahkan daerah sepi kuasa, mendedahkan kaedah, hierarki dan entiti yang mempertahankan struktur hegemoni. Perkakas si tuan sendiri mungkin tidak dapat merobohkan rumahnya, namun perkakas yang lama masih dapat mengecam si tuan yang baru menjelma.
Connie Zheng
(b. China, based in U.S.A.)
As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever
2025
Ink, pencil and collage of intaglio and
cyanotype prints on gampi, mulberry,
hemp and cotton papers
235 cm × 468 cm
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Abstraction, for artist Connie Zheng, is both an aesthetic inheritance and a tool of structural critique. In mimicry of the abstraction of finance capital, Zheng made As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever through a sequential process of translations. Zheng first collaged contemporary seed catalogues — directories of purchasable life forms — into the form of colonial banknotes, such as the British pound, the Spanish real, the French franc. These collaged banknotes were then printed in single colours through a process of intaglio, the mode of printing used to manufacture banknotes. The intaglio banknotes are then collaged into abstract, floating forms within a 13th century Chinese constellational matrix, bearing mere traces of the original collage.
The final composition, which echoes Theosophic abstract art of the early 20th century, comments on the spirituality with which we revere market forces. Our faith, once the domain of stars or religion, is now placed with the invisible hand of the market: it is a common adage that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. To that end, Zheng maps some of the biggest chartered companies, and the dates they were in existence. Almost all of them have a finite line span, even as they were broken up or morphed into other enterprises. For Zheng, the wealth that ultimately remains, and that will always remain, is that which comes from the earth — even as it is increasingly being hollowed out.
Menurut Zheng, keabstrakan ialah pewarisan estetik dan alat untuk kritikan struktur. Untuk meniru keabstrakan pasaran kewangan, Zheng menghasilkan As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever melalui proses padanan yang berurutan. Awalnya Zheng mengkolajkan katalog benih semasa — panduan bentuk kehidupan yang boleh dijualbeli — dengan gambaran wang kertas penjajah, seperti paun British, ril Spanish, dan franc Perancis. Kolaj wang kertas ini kemudiannya dicetak dengan warna tunggal melalui proses intaglio, sejenis teknik cetakan yang digunapakai untuk menghasilkan wang kertas. Wang kertas berintaglio ini seterusnya dikolajkan menjadi abstrak, beralih bentuk dalam matriks bintang abad ke-13 Cina, menampakkan hanya sedikit sisa kolaj aslinya.
Gubahan terakhir, yang mengalun seni abstrak Teosofi pada awal abad ke-20 menyentuh penjiwaan penyembahan kuasa pasaran. Kepercayaan kita, dahulunya dikuasai bintang-bintang atau agama, kini digantikan dengan tangan ghaib pasaran: benarlah kata pepatah mengatakan senang lagi untuk membayangkan kehancuran dunia daripada kehancuran kapitalisme. Untuk itu, Zheng petakan beberapa syarikat berpiagam terbesar dan tarikh penubuhan mereka. Hampir kesemuanya ada jangka garis yang terhad meskipun mereka berpecah atau membentuk badan syarikat lain. Menurut Zheng, kekayaan yang akhirnya ada, dan akan sentiasa ada, adalah yang datang dari bumi — walaupun sering dilombongi.
Connie Zheng
(b. China, based in U.S.A.)
As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever
2025
Ink, pencil and collage of intaglio and
cyanotype prints on gampi, mulberry,
hemp and cotton papers
235 cm × 468 cm
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Abstraction, for artist Connie Zheng, is both an aesthetic inheritance and a tool of structural critique. In mimicry of the abstraction of finance capital, Zheng made As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever through a sequential process of translations. Zheng first collaged contemporary seed catalogues — directories of purchasable life forms — into the form of colonial banknotes, such as the British pound, the Spanish real, the French franc. These collaged banknotes were then printed in single colours through a process of intaglio, the mode of printing used to manufacture banknotes. The intaglio banknotes are then collaged into abstract, floating forms within a 13th century Chinese constellational matrix, bearing mere traces of the original collage.
The final composition, which echoes Theosophic abstract art of the early 20th century, comments on the spirituality with which we revere market forces. Our faith, once the domain of stars or religion, is now placed with the invisible hand of the market: it is a common adage that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. To that end, Zheng maps some of the biggest chartered companies, and the dates they were in existence. Almost all of them have a finite line span, even as they were broken up or morphed into other enterprises. For Zheng, the wealth that ultimately remains, and that will always remain, is that which comes from the earth — even as it is increasingly being hollowed out.
Menurut Zheng, keabstrakan ialah pewarisan estetik dan alat untuk kritikan struktur. Untuk meniru keabstrakan pasaran kewangan, Zheng menghasilkan As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever melalui proses padanan yang berurutan. Awalnya Zheng mengkolajkan katalog benih semasa — panduan bentuk kehidupan yang boleh dijualbeli — dengan gambaran wang kertas penjajah, seperti paun British, ril Spanish, dan franc Perancis. Kolaj wang kertas ini kemudiannya dicetak dengan warna tunggal melalui proses intaglio, sejenis teknik cetakan yang digunapakai untuk menghasilkan wang kertas. Wang kertas berintaglio ini seterusnya dikolajkan menjadi abstrak, beralih bentuk dalam matriks bintang abad ke-13 Cina, menampakkan hanya sedikit sisa kolaj aslinya.
Gubahan terakhir, yang mengalun seni abstrak Teosofi pada awal abad ke-20 menyentuh penjiwaan penyembahan kuasa pasaran. Kepercayaan kita, dahulunya dikuasai bintang-bintang atau agama, kini digantikan dengan tangan ghaib pasaran: benarlah kata pepatah mengatakan senang lagi untuk membayangkan kehancuran dunia daripada kehancuran kapitalisme. Untuk itu, Zheng petakan beberapa syarikat berpiagam terbesar dan tarikh penubuhan mereka. Hampir kesemuanya ada jangka garis yang terhad meskipun mereka berpecah atau membentuk badan syarikat lain. Menurut Zheng, kekayaan yang akhirnya ada, dan akan sentiasa ada, adalah yang datang dari bumi — walaupun sering dilombongi.
Connie Zheng
(b. China, based in U.S.A.)
As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever
2025
Ink, pencil and collage of intaglio and
cyanotype prints on gampi, mulberry,
hemp and cotton papers
235 cm × 468 cm
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Abstraction, for artist Connie Zheng, is both an aesthetic inheritance and a tool of structural critique. In mimicry of the abstraction of finance capital, Zheng made As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever through a sequential process of translations. Zheng first collaged contemporary seed catalogues — directories of purchasable life forms — into the form of colonial banknotes, such as the British pound, the Spanish real, the French franc. These collaged banknotes were then printed in single colours through a process of intaglio, the mode of printing used to manufacture banknotes. The intaglio banknotes are then collaged into abstract, floating forms within a 13th century Chinese constellational matrix, bearing mere traces of the original collage.
The final composition, which echoes Theosophic abstract art of the early 20th century, comments on the spirituality with which we revere market forces. Our faith, once the domain of stars or religion, is now placed with the invisible hand of the market: it is a common adage that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. To that end, Zheng maps some of the biggest chartered companies, and the dates they were in existence. Almost all of them have a finite line span, even as they were broken up or morphed into other enterprises. For Zheng, the wealth that ultimately remains, and that will always remain, is that which comes from the earth — even as it is increasingly being hollowed out.
Menurut Zheng, keabstrakan ialah pewarisan estetik dan alat untuk kritikan struktur. Untuk meniru keabstrakan pasaran kewangan, Zheng menghasilkan As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever melalui proses padanan yang berurutan. Awalnya Zheng mengkolajkan katalog benih semasa — panduan bentuk kehidupan yang boleh dijualbeli — dengan gambaran wang kertas penjajah, seperti paun British, ril Spanish, dan franc Perancis. Kolaj wang kertas ini kemudiannya dicetak dengan warna tunggal melalui proses intaglio, sejenis teknik cetakan yang digunapakai untuk menghasilkan wang kertas. Wang kertas berintaglio ini seterusnya dikolajkan menjadi abstrak, beralih bentuk dalam matriks bintang abad ke-13 Cina, menampakkan hanya sedikit sisa kolaj aslinya.
Gubahan terakhir, yang mengalun seni abstrak Teosofi pada awal abad ke-20 menyentuh penjiwaan penyembahan kuasa pasaran. Kepercayaan kita, dahulunya dikuasai bintang-bintang atau agama, kini digantikan dengan tangan ghaib pasaran: benarlah kata pepatah mengatakan senang lagi untuk membayangkan kehancuran dunia daripada kehancuran kapitalisme. Untuk itu, Zheng petakan beberapa syarikat berpiagam terbesar dan tarikh penubuhan mereka. Hampir kesemuanya ada jangka garis yang terhad meskipun mereka berpecah atau membentuk badan syarikat lain. Menurut Zheng, kekayaan yang akhirnya ada, dan akan sentiasa ada, adalah yang datang dari bumi — walaupun sering dilombongi.
Corey McCorkle
(b. 1969, U.S.A.)
Pendulum
2016
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
The Cavendish banana was named after William Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire, who in 1834 received a shipment of these bananas from Mauritius. It was then cultivated by his gardener Sir Joseph Paxton, who would later gain renown as the architect of the Crystal Palace for the 1851 Great Exhibition. Cavendish bananas were then sent across the Pacific, including being brought to Samoa by missionary John Williams. Today, Cavendish bananas are the most consumed banana in the world, accounting for half of all banana production worldwide. It is unable to reproduce sexually, propagating instead through identical clones and is highly susceptible to blight.
In Pendulum, Corey McCorkle replaces the weight of a pendulum with a stalk of Cavendish bananas. A pendulum usually records the passage of time through movement and gravity, inexorable and unceasing. Yet McCorkle’s Pendulum remains silent and immobile, while its Cavendish bananas rot over time. It is destined for decay.
Pisang Cavendish dinamakan bersempena William Cavendish, Duke Devonshire ke-enam yang menerima kiriman pisang ini dari Mauritius pada tahun 1834. Ia kemudian dibiakkan oleh tukang kebunnya, Sir Joseph Paxton yang kemudiannya dikenali sebagai arkitek Istana Kristal untuk Pameran Agung 1851. Pisang Cavendish ketika itu dihantar ke seluruh Pasifik, termasuklah dibawa masuk ke Samoa oleh mubaligh John Williams. Hari ini, pisang Cavendish adalah pisang yang paling banyak dimakan di dunia, menjadikannya separuh daripada penghasilan pisang sedunia. Pisang ini tidak boleh dibiakkan secara seksual, penghasilannya adalah melalui klon serupa dan mudah terdedah kepada penyakit hawar.
Melalui Pendulum, Corey McCorkle menggantikan berat pendulum dengan setandan pisang Cavendish. Pendulum biasanya, sebuah alat untuk mengukur masa melalui pergerakan dan graviti, terus menerus dan tidak terhenti. Namun Pendulum McCorkle kekal senyap dan tidak bergerak, manakala pisang Cavendishnya busuk lama- kelamaan. Ia ditakdirkan untuk reput.
Corey McCorkle
(b. 1969, U.S.A.)
Pendulum
2016
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
The Cavendish banana was named after William Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire, who in 1834 received a shipment of these bananas from Mauritius. It was then cultivated by his gardener Sir Joseph Paxton, who would later gain renown as the architect of the Crystal Palace for the 1851 Great Exhibition. Cavendish bananas were then sent across the Pacific, including being brought to Samoa by missionary John Williams. Today, Cavendish bananas are the most consumed banana in the world, accounting for half of all banana production worldwide. It is unable to reproduce sexually, propagating instead through identical clones and is highly susceptible to blight.
In Pendulum, Corey McCorkle replaces the weight of a pendulum with a stalk of Cavendish bananas. A pendulum usually records the passage of time through movement and gravity, inexorable and unceasing. Yet McCorkle’s Pendulum remains silent and immobile, while its Cavendish bananas rot over time. It is destined for decay.
Pisang Cavendish dinamakan bersempena William Cavendish, Duke Devonshire ke-enam yang menerima kiriman pisang ini dari Mauritius pada tahun 1834. Ia kemudian dibiakkan oleh tukang kebunnya, Sir Joseph Paxton yang kemudiannya dikenali sebagai arkitek Istana Kristal untuk Pameran Agung 1851. Pisang Cavendish ketika itu dihantar ke seluruh Pasifik, termasuklah dibawa masuk ke Samoa oleh mubaligh John Williams. Hari ini, pisang Cavendish adalah pisang yang paling banyak dimakan di dunia, menjadikannya separuh daripada penghasilan pisang sedunia. Pisang ini tidak boleh dibiakkan secara seksual, penghasilannya adalah melalui klon serupa dan mudah terdedah kepada penyakit hawar.
Melalui Pendulum, Corey McCorkle menggantikan berat pendulum dengan setandan pisang Cavendish. Pendulum biasanya, sebuah alat untuk mengukur masa melalui pergerakan dan graviti, terus menerus dan tidak terhenti. Namun Pendulum McCorkle kekal senyap dan tidak bergerak, manakala pisang Cavendishnya busuk lama- kelamaan. Ia ditakdirkan untuk reput.
Diane Severin Nguyen
(b. 1990, U.S.A.)
Breakthrough Sunrise
2020
LightJet C-print, custom steel frame
38.1 cm × 25.4 cm (unframed)
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
To produce her photo and film works, Diane Severin Nguyen makes scenes from found materials, both natural and synthetic. Breakthrough Sunrise and If Revolution is a Sickness was produced at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when touch was mediated through gloves, a thin layer of false skin that separated a dangerous outside from a vulnerable interior. The works exist in a fleeting moment: lit by transient, prosthetic light — sunset’s glow, an iPhone flash, fire — the camera intervenes just moments before their unstable arrangements and their fleeting lighting shift, dissolve, or decay. Shot at close range, the photographs capture matter in states of wetness, slime, and dirt. They unsettle, resisting the sterile surfaces, fixed forms, and artificial boundaries that regimes of containment, or systems of interchangeability, assume. Mind, body, and matter are always seeping through.
Sebagai penghasilan karya foto dan filemnya, Diane Severin Nguyen mencipta imej daripada bahan ditemui, sama ada bahan asli atau sintetik. Breakthrough Sunrise dan If Revolution is a Sickness dihasilkan di kemuncak pandemik COVID-19, apabila sentuhan diperantara melalui sarung tangan, satu lapisan nipis kulit palsu yang memisahkan bahaya luar dengan dalaman yang mudah terdedah. Karya-kaya ini wujud dalam saat tanpa sangga: diterangi cahaya prostetik sementara — sinaran matahari, pancar kilas iPhone, nyalaan api — kamera menyelit menjelang aturan goyah dan cahaya tanpa sangga itu beralih arah, lenyap atau merosot. Gambar-gambar ini yang ditangkap pada jarak dekat mengabadikan bahan dalam sifat kebasahan, berlendir dan tercemar. Mereka tidak menyenangkan, menentang permukaan bersih, bentuk tetap, dan sempadan buatan yang ditanggap rejim pembendungan atau sistem kesalingbolehtukaran. Minda, tubuh dan bahan akan sentiasa meresap-resap.
Diane Severin Nguyen
(b. 1990, U.S.A.)
If Revolution is a Sickness
2020
LightJet C-print, custom steel frame
38.1 cm × 25.4 cm (unframed)
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
To produce her photo and film works, Diane Severin Nguyen makes scenes from found materials, both natural and synthetic. Breakthrough Sunrise and If Revolution is a Sickness was produced at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when touch was mediated through gloves, a thin layer of false skin that separated a dangerous outside from a vulnerable interior. The works exist in a fleeting moment: lit by transient, prosthetic light — sunset’s glow, an iPhone flash, fire — the camera intervenes just moments before their unstable arrangements and their fleeting lighting shift, dissolve, or decay. Shot at close range, the photographs capture matter in states of wetness, slime, and dirt. They unsettle, resisting the sterile surfaces, fixed forms, and artificial boundaries that regimes of containment, or systems of interchangeability, assume. Mind, body, and matter are always seeping through.
Sebagai penghasilan karya foto dan filemnya, Diane Severin Nguyen mencipta imej daripada bahan ditemui, sama ada bahan asli atau sintetik. Breakthrough Sunrise dan If Revolution is a Sickness dihasilkan di kemuncak pandemik COVID-19, apabila sentuhan diperantara melalui sarung tangan, satu lapisan nipis kulit palsu yang memisahkan bahaya luar dengan dalaman yang mudah terdedah. Karya-kaya ini wujud dalam saat tanpa sangga: diterangi cahaya prostetik sementara — sinaran matahari, pancar kilas iPhone, nyalaan api — kamera menyelit menjelang aturan goyah dan cahaya tanpa sangga itu beralih arah, lenyap atau merosot. Gambar-gambar ini yang ditangkap pada jarak dekat mengabadikan bahan dalam sifat kebasahan, berlendir dan tercemar. Mereka tidak menyenangkan, menentang permukaan bersih, bentuk tetap, dan sempadan buatan yang ditanggap rejim pembendungan atau sistem kesalingbolehtukaran. Minda, tubuh dan bahan akan sentiasa meresap-resap.
Gogularaajan Rajendran
(b. 1993, Malaysia)
Coolies’ Chorus
2025
Single-channel video, colour, sound, 1 hr 10 min
Singers: Kalaimamani Chinnaponnu Kumar,
Mu. Athi Raman, K.P. Ambikapathy,
M. Santhirasekaran, Dr. Gobu
Translator: Deena Dakshini
Producer: Kumanavannan Rajendran
Co-researchers: Vandana Saxena,
Nithiya Guna Saigaran
Additional Translations: Mutharasu Ramasamy
In 1998, a collection of Tamil folksongs was posthumously published in Chennai. Compiled by Dr. R. Dhandayutham of the University of Malaya, it contained hundreds of folksong lyrics once sung on Malayan plantations. Over two decades later, filmmaker Gogularaajan Rajendran stumbled upon the archive, struck by its raw, unfiltered account of Tamil workers’ lives. Working with folk singers and experts in India, he began a process of reconstruction. While we have no record of these songs’ melodies, the lyrics, particularly their rhythm and themes, pointed toward familiar melodic structures and genres, all still alive and sung in Tamil today. Such lineages offered the scaffolding to reimagine these songs.
Coolie’s Chorus presents fourteen folksongs across a range of genres, including lullabies, work songs, laments, and romance songs. More than a historical restoration, Gogularaajan captures a conversation rooted in call-and-response, improvisation, and experience. As singers respond to one another’s prompts and ideas, the songs are coaxed into being, occupying a space between memory and imagination. Many of them express longing for a distant homeland as they reckon with their present land of Malaya. By bringing together deep knowledge of Tamil folksong traditions with diasporic memory, Coolie’s Chorus enacts a homecoming, not to recover what was lost, but to carry forward their voices as a missive of their experience.
Pada tahun 1998, satu koleksi lagu rakyat Tamil telah diterbitkan secara anumerta di Chennai. Koleksi itu yang disusun oleh Dr. R. Dhandayutham dari Universiti Malaya mengandungi ratusan lirik lagu rakyat yang pernah dinyanyikan di ladang-ladang Malaya. Dua dekad kemudiannya, Gogularaajan Rajendran, seorang pembuat filem menemukannya koleksi ini, dan terkesan akan kisah kehidupan pekerja Tamil yang mentah dan tidak bertapis. Beliau memulakan proses pembuatan semula dengan seniman rakyat dan pakar di India. Walaupun rakaman melodi lagu-lagu ini tidak wujud, liriknya, terutama sekali rima dan temanya menunjuk ke arah struktur dan genre melodi yang biasa didengari, semuanya masih segar dan masih dinyanyikan di India sehingga kini. Susur galur ini menawarkan rangka untuk membayang semula lagu-lagu ini.
Coolie’s Chorus mempersembahkan empat belas lagu rakyat berbilang genre termasuklah lagu dodoi, lagu kerja, lagu ratapan, dan lagu cinta. Ini bukan sekadar pembinaan semula pensejarahan, malah Gogularaajan turut merakam lawan bicara bertunjangkan seru- sahut, kespontanan, dan gerak hati. Ketika penyanyi membalas galakan dan idea antara satu sama lain, lagu tersebut perlahan-lahan menjadi, memenuhi ruang antara ingatan dan khayalan. Kebanyakkannya menyatakan kerinduan akan kampung halaman saat mereka mengendah tanah di Malaya. Gabungan pengetahuan mendalam akan tradisi lagu rakyat Tamil dan ingatan diaspora membenarkan Coolie’s Chorus mewujudkan kepulangan, bukan untuk menawan semula apa yang hilang tetapi untuk mengemukakan suara sebagai perutusan pengalaman mereka.
Inauk S. Gullah
(b. 1938 – d. 2020, Sabah, Malaysia)
36 Jenis Buah Dalam Hutan Pupus Akibat Pembalakan Haram di Sabah
(36 Kinds of Fruits in the Forest Extinct Because of Illegal Logging in Sabah)
2011
Oil on plywood
105 cm × 146 cm
Courtesy of the artist’s family,
Sabah Art Gallery
In Inauk S. Gullah’s world, conflict simmers just beneath the surface. In Untitled, an indigenous hunter pierces a buffalo, and smaller mammals — perhaps cats or weasels — rush to drink from its fount of blood. In Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu, people are gambling on cock fights, fighting each other with spears, while angels and devils influence mankind and Satan tempts Eve. “Don’t kill,” Gullah writes, “Wage war against they who war upon you.”
Gullah was a Murut Paluan native to Nabawan, inland Sabah, and the first from his community to convert to the Seventh- day Adventist church, for which he later became a pastor. Later in life, Gullah became a full-time painter, depicting the Sabah he saw around him, from the verdant landscape to the moral corruption. But no one was free from his critique: he was as ready to point out injustices done by fellow man as he was injustices by the state. His paintings are moral stories without easy moralism. Largely unknown outside Sabah in his lifetime, he was a painter of singular vision.
Dalam dunia Inauk S. Gullah, sengketa mereneh di balik permukaannya. Dalam Untitled, eorang pemburu pribumi menusuk seekor kerbau, dan mamalia kecil — mungkin kucing atau wesel — segera meneguk dari pancutan darahnya. Dalam Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu, manusia bertaruh ayam laga, melawan sesama lain dengan lembing, sambil malaikat dan iblis mempengaruh manusia dan Syaitan menggoda Hawa. “Jangan berbunuhan,” tulis Gullah, “Berperanglah ke atas mereka yang memerangimu.”
Gullah ialah seorang Murut Paluan asal Nabawan, daratan Sabah dan antara yang pertama dari masyarakatnya untuk menyertai Gereja Advent Hari Ketujuh, yang kemudiannya beliau menjadi seorang pastor. Setelah itu, Gullah menjadi pelukis sepenuh masa, menggambarkan Sabah yang dilihat sekelilingnya, dari lanskap menghijau hinggalah keruntuhan moral. Tiada siapa terlepas dari kritikannya: beliau siap sedia memaparkan ketidakadilan tidak kira oleh manusia atau kerajaan. Lukisannya adalah cerita-cerita moral tanpa moralisme mudah. Beliau merupakan seorang pelukis berpandangan luar biasa yang sepanjang hidupnya tidak dikenali mereka yang berada di luar Sabah.
Inauk S. Gullah
(b. 1938 – d. 2020, Sabah, Malaysia)
Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu
(My Folk Art Analysis of the Land Below the Wind)
2012
High-gloss industrial paint on plywood
121.9 cm × 121.9 cm
Courtesy of the artist’s family,
Sabah Art Gallery
In Inauk S. Gullah’s world, conflict simmers just beneath the surface. In Untitled, an indigenous hunter pierces a buffalo, and smaller mammals — perhaps cats or weasels — rush to drink from its fount of blood. In Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu, people are gambling on cock fights, fighting each other with spears, while angels and devils influence mankind and Satan tempts Eve. “Don’t kill,” Gullah writes, “Wage war against they who war upon you.”
Gullah was a Murut Paluan native to Nabawan, inland Sabah, and the first from his community to convert to the Seventh- day Adventist church, for which he later became a pastor. Later in life, Gullah became a full-time painter, depicting the Sabah he saw around him, from the verdant landscape to the moral corruption. But no one was free from his critique: he was as ready to point out injustices done by fellow man as he was injustices by the state. His paintings are moral stories without easy moralism. Largely unknown outside Sabah in his lifetime, he was a painter of singular vision.
Dalam dunia Inauk S. Gullah, sengketa mereneh di balik permukaannya. Dalam Untitled, eorang pemburu pribumi menusuk seekor kerbau, dan mamalia kecil — mungkin kucing atau wesel — segera meneguk dari pancutan darahnya. Dalam Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu, manusia bertaruh ayam laga, melawan sesama lain dengan lembing, sambil malaikat dan iblis mempengaruh manusia dan Syaitan menggoda Hawa. “Jangan berbunuhan,” tulis Gullah, “Berperanglah ke atas mereka yang memerangimu.”
Gullah ialah seorang Murut Paluan asal Nabawan, daratan Sabah dan antara yang pertama dari masyarakatnya untuk menyertai Gereja Advent Hari Ketujuh, yang kemudiannya beliau menjadi seorang pastor. Setelah itu, Gullah menjadi pelukis sepenuh masa, menggambarkan Sabah yang dilihat sekelilingnya, dari lanskap menghijau hinggalah keruntuhan moral. Tiada siapa terlepas dari kritikannya: beliau siap sedia memaparkan ketidakadilan tidak kira oleh manusia atau kerajaan. Lukisannya adalah cerita-cerita moral tanpa moralisme mudah. Beliau merupakan seorang pelukis berpandangan luar biasa yang sepanjang hidupnya tidak dikenali mereka yang berada di luar Sabah.
Inauk S. Gullah
(b. 1938 – d. 2020, Sabah, Malaysia)
Untitled
2010
Oil on plywood
80 cm × 78 cm
Courtesy of the artist’s family,
Sabah Art Gallery
In Inauk S. Gullah’s world, conflict simmers just beneath the surface. In Untitled, an indigenous hunter pierces a buffalo, and smaller mammals — perhaps cats or weasels — rush to drink from its fount of blood. In Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu, people are gambling on cock fights, fighting each other with spears, while angels and devils influence mankind and Satan tempts Eve. “Don’t kill,” Gullah writes, “Wage war against they who war upon you.”
Gullah was a Murut Paluan native to Nabawan, inland Sabah, and the first from his community to convert to the Seventh- day Adventist church, for which he later became a pastor. Later in life, Gullah became a full-time painter, depicting the Sabah he saw around him, from the verdant landscape to the moral corruption. But no one was free from his critique: he was as ready to point out injustices done by fellow man as he was injustices by the state. His paintings are moral stories without easy moralism. Largely unknown outside Sabah in his lifetime, he was a painter of singular vision.
Dalam dunia Inauk S. Gullah, sengketa mereneh di balik permukaannya. Dalam Untitled, eorang pemburu pribumi menusuk seekor kerbau, dan mamalia kecil — mungkin kucing atau wesel — segera meneguk dari pancutan darahnya. Dalam Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu, manusia bertaruh ayam laga, melawan sesama lain dengan lembing, sambil malaikat dan iblis mempengaruh manusia dan Syaitan menggoda Hawa. “Jangan berbunuhan,” tulis Gullah, “Berperanglah ke atas mereka yang memerangimu.”
Gullah ialah seorang Murut Paluan asal Nabawan, daratan Sabah dan antara yang pertama dari masyarakatnya untuk menyertai Gereja Advent Hari Ketujuh, yang kemudiannya beliau menjadi seorang pastor. Setelah itu, Gullah menjadi pelukis sepenuh masa, menggambarkan Sabah yang dilihat sekelilingnya, dari lanskap menghijau hinggalah keruntuhan moral. Tiada siapa terlepas dari kritikannya: beliau siap sedia memaparkan ketidakadilan tidak kira oleh manusia atau kerajaan. Lukisannya adalah cerita-cerita moral tanpa moralisme mudah. Beliau merupakan seorang pelukis berpandangan luar biasa yang sepanjang hidupnya tidak dikenali mereka yang berada di luar Sabah.
Inauk S. Gullah
(b. 1938 – d. 2020, Sabah, Malaysia)
“Di Giluk Falls Tiada Raja Pemburu Lagi…”
(In Giluk Falls, There Is No More King of the Hunters)
2007
High-gloss industrial paint and wood glue
on plywood
114.3cm × 147.3 cm
Courtesy of the artist’s family,
Sabah Art Gallery
In Inauk S. Gullah’s world, conflict simmers just beneath the surface. In Untitled, an indigenous hunter pierces a buffalo, and smaller mammals — perhaps cats or weasels — rush to drink from its fount of blood. In Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu, people are gambling on cock fights, fighting each other with spears, while angels and devils influence mankind and Satan tempts Eve. “Don’t kill,” Gullah writes, “Wage war against they who war upon you.”
Gullah was a Murut Paluan native to Nabawan, inland Sabah, and the first from his community to convert to the Seventh- day Adventist church, for which he later became a pastor. Later in life, Gullah became a full-time painter, depicting the Sabah he saw around him, from the verdant landscape to the moral corruption. But no one was free from his critique: he was as ready to point out injustices done by fellow man as he was injustices by the state. His paintings are moral stories without easy moralism. Largely unknown outside Sabah in his lifetime, he was a painter of singular vision.
Dalam dunia Inauk S. Gullah, sengketa mereneh di balik permukaannya. Dalam Untitled, eorang pemburu pribumi menusuk seekor kerbau, dan mamalia kecil — mungkin kucing atau wesel — segera meneguk dari pancutan darahnya. Dalam Folk Art Ku Analisis Negeri Di Bawah Bayu, manusia bertaruh ayam laga, melawan sesama lain dengan lembing, sambil malaikat dan iblis mempengaruh manusia dan Syaitan menggoda Hawa. “Jangan berbunuhan,” tulis Gullah, “Berperanglah ke atas mereka yang memerangimu.”
Gullah ialah seorang Murut Paluan asal Nabawan, daratan Sabah dan antara yang pertama dari masyarakatnya untuk menyertai Gereja Advent Hari Ketujuh, yang kemudiannya beliau menjadi seorang pastor. Setelah itu, Gullah menjadi pelukis sepenuh masa, menggambarkan Sabah yang dilihat sekelilingnya, dari lanskap menghijau hinggalah keruntuhan moral. Tiada siapa terlepas dari kritikannya: beliau siap sedia memaparkan ketidakadilan tidak kira oleh manusia atau kerajaan. Lukisannya adalah cerita-cerita moral tanpa moralisme mudah. Beliau merupakan seorang pelukis berpandangan luar biasa yang sepanjang hidupnya tidak dikenali mereka yang berada di luar Sabah.
Izat Arif
(b. 1986, Malaysia)
Tuan Tanah (Land Lord)
2025
Three single channel videos, colour, sound,
47 sec; 1 min; 1 min 13 sec
Soil, wood, three structures,
120 cm × 220 cm × 40 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
The clouds turned to the shining moon
Its light is clear and natural
Becoming bright in this forest of thorns
When you encounter bad luck
It is not the fault of inevitable destiny
It is the lack (of) one’s own effort.
A reader submitted poem to the magazine
Peneroka: Majallah Peladang-Peladang LKTP
Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) was founded in 1956 to resettle rural landless poor into smallholder plantation colonies. It was one of the most successful poverty alleviation programmes of the 20th century, lifting an entire generation into the middle class. FELDA was not merely a land programme, but also a biopolitical one. Programme administrators saw settlers as an opportunity to build a new model of citizen, enshrining the virtues of responsibility, hard work, and gratitude to the state.
Izat Arif invites audiences to see the thankful masses through the lens, and heights, of three orang besar (“great men”), namely Tun Abdul Razak, who spearheaded FELDA; Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States; and Suharto, President of Indonesia. (FELDA renamed settlements to Kampung LBJ and Kampung Soeharto in honour of their respective state visits in 1966 and 1970.) With footage drawn from archives and films, Tuan Tanah (Land Lord) calls attention to the social contract of gratitude between state and settler.
Awan beraleh bulan chermelang
Chahaya-nya jelas bukan buatan
Menjadi terang di-hutan duri
Bila beroleh nasib yang malang
Bukan salah takdir suratan
Hanya kurang ikhtiar sendiri.
Sebuah sajak kiriman pembaca Peneroka:
Majallah Peladang-Peladang LKTP
Lembaga Kemajuan Tanah Persekutuan (FELDA) ditubuhkan pada tahun 1956 untuk menjadikan warga miskin tanpa tanah di pedalaman kepada koloni peladang kecil. Ia antara program pembasmian kemiskinan paling berjaya pada abad ke-20, menukarkan satu generasi kepada kelas menengah. FELDA bukan hanya sekadar skim tanah, ia juga skim biopolitik. Pentadbir program ini melihat peneroka sebagai satu peluang untuk membina model rakyat baharu dengan menyemadikan nilai-nilai tanggungjawab, kerja keras dan rasa terhutang budi pada kerajaan.
Izat menjemput penonton untuk memerhati orang ramai yang berterima kasih melalui sudut pandang, dan ketinggian, tiga orang besar. Mereka adalah Tun Abdul Razak, pelopor FELDA; Lyndon B. Johnson, Presiden AS; dan Suharto, Presiden Indonesia. (FELDA menamakan semula penempatan kepada Kampung LBJ dan Kampung Soeharto bersempena lawatan rasmi berasingan mereka pada tahun 1966 dan 1970.) Tuan Tanah (Land Lord), yang menggunakan rakaman arkib dan filem itu menarik perhatian kepada kontrak sosial perhutangan budi antara kerajaan dan peneroka.
Izat Arif
(b. 1986, Malaysia)
Tuan Tanah (Land Lord)
2025
Three single channel videos, colour, sound,
47 sec; 1 min; 1 min 13 sec
Soil, wood, three structures,
120 cm × 220 cm × 40 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
The clouds turned to the shining moon
Its light is clear and natural
Becoming bright in this forest of thorns
When you encounter bad luck
It is not the fault of inevitable destiny
It is the lack (of) one’s own effort.
A reader submitted poem to the magazine
Peneroka: Majallah Peladang-Peladang LKTP
Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) was founded in 1956 to resettle rural landless poor into smallholder plantation colonies. It was one of the most successful poverty alleviation programmes of the 20th century, lifting an entire generation into the middle class. FELDA was not merely a land programme, but also a biopolitical one. Programme administrators saw settlers as an opportunity to build a new model of citizen, enshrining the virtues of responsibility, hard work, and gratitude to the state.
Izat Arif invites audiences to see the thankful masses through the lens, and heights, of three orang besar (“great men”), namely Tun Abdul Razak, who spearheaded FELDA; Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States; and Suharto, President of Indonesia. (FELDA renamed settlements to Kampung LBJ and Kampung Soeharto in honour of their respective state visits in 1966 and 1970.) With footage drawn from archives and films, Tuan Tanah (Land Lord) calls attention to the social contract of gratitude between state and settler.
Awan beraleh bulan chermelang
Chahaya-nya jelas bukan buatan
Menjadi terang di-hutan duri
Bila beroleh nasib yang malang
Bukan salah takdir suratan
Hanya kurang ikhtiar sendiri.
Sebuah sajak kiriman pembaca Peneroka:
Majallah Peladang-Peladang LKTP
Lembaga Kemajuan Tanah Persekutuan (FELDA) ditubuhkan pada tahun 1956 untuk menjadikan warga miskin tanpa tanah di pedalaman kepada koloni peladang kecil. Ia antara program pembasmian kemiskinan paling berjaya pada abad ke-20, menukarkan satu generasi kepada kelas menengah. FELDA bukan hanya sekadar skim tanah, ia juga skim biopolitik. Pentadbir program ini melihat peneroka sebagai satu peluang untuk membina model rakyat baharu dengan menyemadikan nilai-nilai tanggungjawab, kerja keras dan rasa terhutang budi pada kerajaan.
Izat menjemput penonton untuk memerhati orang ramai yang berterima kasih melalui sudut pandang, dan ketinggian, tiga orang besar. Mereka adalah Tun Abdul Razak, pelopor FELDA; Lyndon B. Johnson, Presiden AS; dan Suharto, Presiden Indonesia. (FELDA menamakan semula penempatan kepada Kampung LBJ dan Kampung Soeharto bersempena lawatan rasmi berasingan mereka pada tahun 1966 dan 1970.) Tuan Tanah (Land Lord), yang menggunakan rakaman arkib dan filem itu menarik perhatian kepada kontrak sosial perhutangan budi antara kerajaan dan peneroka.
Izat Arif
(b. 1986, Malaysia)
Tuan Tanah (Land Lord)
2025
Three single channel videos, colour, sound,
47 sec; 1 min; 1 min 13 sec
Soil, wood, three structures,
120 cm × 220 cm × 40 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
The clouds turned to the shining moon
Its light is clear and natural
Becoming bright in this forest of thorns
When you encounter bad luck
It is not the fault of inevitable destiny
It is the lack (of) one’s own effort.
A reader submitted poem to the magazine
Peneroka: Majallah Peladang-Peladang LKTP
Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) was founded in 1956 to resettle rural landless poor into smallholder plantation colonies. It was one of the most successful poverty alleviation programmes of the 20th century, lifting an entire generation into the middle class. FELDA was not merely a land programme, but also a biopolitical one. Programme administrators saw settlers as an opportunity to build a new model of citizen, enshrining the virtues of responsibility, hard work, and gratitude to the state.
Izat Arif invites audiences to see the thankful masses through the lens, and heights, of three orang besar (“great men”), namely Tun Abdul Razak, who spearheaded FELDA; Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States; and Suharto, President of Indonesia. (FELDA renamed settlements to Kampung LBJ and Kampung Soeharto in honour of their respective state visits in 1966 and 1970.) With footage drawn from archives and films, Tuan Tanah (Land Lord) calls attention to the social contract of gratitude between state and settler.
Awan beraleh bulan chermelang
Chahaya-nya jelas bukan buatan
Menjadi terang di-hutan duri
Bila beroleh nasib yang malang
Bukan salah takdir suratan
Hanya kurang ikhtiar sendiri.
Sebuah sajak kiriman pembaca Peneroka:
Majallah Peladang-Peladang LKTP
Lembaga Kemajuan Tanah Persekutuan (FELDA) ditubuhkan pada tahun 1956 untuk menjadikan warga miskin tanpa tanah di pedalaman kepada koloni peladang kecil. Ia antara program pembasmian kemiskinan paling berjaya pada abad ke-20, menukarkan satu generasi kepada kelas menengah. FELDA bukan hanya sekadar skim tanah, ia juga skim biopolitik. Pentadbir program ini melihat peneroka sebagai satu peluang untuk membina model rakyat baharu dengan menyemadikan nilai-nilai tanggungjawab, kerja keras dan rasa terhutang budi pada kerajaan.
Izat menjemput penonton untuk memerhati orang ramai yang berterima kasih melalui sudut pandang, dan ketinggian, tiga orang besar. Mereka adalah Tun Abdul Razak, pelopor FELDA; Lyndon B. Johnson, Presiden AS; dan Suharto, Presiden Indonesia. (FELDA menamakan semula penempatan kepada Kampung LBJ dan Kampung Soeharto bersempena lawatan rasmi berasingan mereka pada tahun 1966 dan 1970.) Tuan Tanah (Land Lord), yang menggunakan rakaman arkib dan filem itu menarik perhatian kepada kontrak sosial perhutangan budi antara kerajaan dan peneroka.
Joydeb Roaja
(b. 1973, Bangladesh)
Generation Wish Yielding Trees and Atomic Tree 57
2023
Ink pen on paper
153 cm × 107 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Hailing from politically fraught Chittagong Hill Tracts in south-eastern Bangladesh, Joydeb Roaja is an indigenous Tripura artist interested in enacting reversals of power dynamics. In his series of ink drawings, indigenous figures loom large, dwarfing military figures who are pictured like toy soldiers. In Generation Wish Yielding Trees and Atomic Tree 57, a woman is seen as working the land, holding a hoe that bears distinctive similarity to the barrel of a tank. Some soldiers by her feet are trying to stop her, and others cower as she breaks through the phalanx of soldiers. In protest of the militarised nation-building efforts by the Bengali-majority state, Roaja rewrites the tools of both militarisation and agriculture, imbuing indigenous agricultural practice, and those who exercise them, with the might and right of existence.
Roaja ialah seorang artis pribumi Tripura asal dari Chittagong Hill Tracts, daerah politik tegang di tenggara Bangaladesh, yang mendalami pelakuan semula pergolakan dinamik kuasa. Lewat siri lukisan dakwatnya, figura pribumi tampak membesar, mengerdilkan figura tentera yang digambarkan umpama askar mainan. Menerusi Generation Wish Yielding Trees and Atomic Tree 57, seorang wanita dilihat sedang mengerjakan tanah, memegang cangkul serupa laras kereta kebal. Sesetengah askar di kakinya cuba menghentikannya, dan yang lain meromok saat dia meroboh benteng askar. Roaja mengolah alatan ketenteraan dan pertanian, sebagai protes akan usaha pembangunan-negara bersenjata oleh kerajaan majoriti Bengal, menyerap kebiasaan pertanian pribumi dan mereka yang mengamalkannya, berserta kudrat dan hak kewujudannya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Acrylic on tapestry
232 cm × 157 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10,
l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of
Sanbras)
2020–2021
Acrylic on tapestry
167 cm × 116 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
11 cm × 60 cm × 25 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
11 cm × 60 cm × 25 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
23 cm × 32 cm diameter
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
23 cm × 32 cm diameter
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
26 cm × 18 cm × 11 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
30 cm × 13 cm × 23cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
35 cm × 34 cm × 30 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
Approx. 18 cm × 45 cm × 21 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
Approx. 18 cm × 45 cm × 21 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
Approx. 50 cm × 46 cm × 31 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
Approx. 50 cm × 46 cm × 31 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
Approx. 8 cm × 36 cm × 34 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
(b. 1981, Guadeloupe)
Ten pieces from the series Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras)
2020–2021
Sculpture, paper, wire frame, mortar, and acrylic paint
Approx. 8 cm × 36 cm × 34 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s speculative paintings and sculptures reflect her migration story: she is the descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to Guadeloupe by the French Government in the 19th century to replace the free labour of the transatlantic slave trade. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras is in dialogue with both Sinnapah Mary’s experiences as a child in Guadeloupe and with contemporary stories of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Forgoing documentarian tendencies, Sinnapah Mary instead blends fact and fiction into the diaristic, first-person perspective of a child and her playful universe.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras tells the tale of Sanbras, a girl in a school uniform and braids who is building a new community in the mangrove. Inspired by Maroon culture, wherein escaped slaves formed their own settlements and often creolised with indigenous people, Sanbras forges alliances with other characters she meets along the way, such as Jamal the Tiger, to build her paradise. Influenced by Hinduism, Sanbras is shapeshifting, able to grow arms, legs or eyes as she wishes. Sanbras’s world, though always pictured with naivete, is at times sinister: in one sculpture, her amputated leg is served on a plate as a piece of cake. The fantastical utopia cannot be extricated from embodied histories of violence: it is from these two poles that Sinnapah Mary fashions her stories.
Lukisan dan arca spekulatif Kelly Sinnapah Mary membayangkan kisah hijrahnya: beliau berketurunan buruh kontrak yang dihantar dari India ke Guadeloupe oleh Kerajaan Perancis pada abad ke-19 untuk menjadi ganti tenaga buruh percuma perdagangan hamba transatlantik. Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras berdialog dengan kedua-dua pengalaman Sinnapah Mary sebagai seorang kanak- kanak di Guadeloupe dan dengan kisah- kisah semasa diaspora India di Hindia Barat Perancis. Pendekatan dokumentari diabaikan, dengannya Sinnapah Mary mengadun fakta dan fiksi membentuk pandangan diri berdiari seorang kanak-kanak dan dunia mainannya.
Notebook 10, l‘enfance de sanbras menceritakan kisah Sanbras, seorang gadis berpakaian sekolah dan bertoceng yang sedang membina sebuah masyarakat baru di kawasan paya bakau. Seperti hamba- hamba budaya Maroon yang lepas lari lalu membentuk penempatan sendiri dan bercampur aduk dengan warga pribumi, Sanbras mencipta hubungan dengan watak lain yang ditemuinya sepanjang perjalanan, misalnya Jamal Sang Harimau untuk membina syurganya. Pengaruh Hindu terbit apabila Sanbras boleh bertukar bentuk, menambah lengan, kaki atau mata semahu hatinya. Dunia Sanbras, meskipun digambarkan naif, kadangkala ada gerunnya: dalam satu arca, kakinya yang telah dipotong dihidang sebagai sepotong kek beralas pinggan. Utopia fantasi juga tidak lekang dengan sejarah warisan keganasan: daripada dua pandangan inilah Sinnapah Mary menggaya kisah-kisahnya.
Khvay Samnang
(b. 1982, Cambodia)
Rubber Man
2014
Single-channel HD video, colour, sound,
8 min 31 sec
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Rubber Man is set in Ratanakiri, a region in northeastern Cambodia notorious for land grabs that displace indigenous communities and allocate land for logging, mining, and plantations. In the video, artist Khvay Samnang, fully nude, charges around rubber plantations while periodically pouring buckets of fresh liquid latex over his body. Possessed with purpose, this rubber man is neither helpless nor sentimental. Perhaps his closest relative is the orang minyak, a supernatural creature from Malay urban legend that abducts young women and eludes capture due to its slick, oil-covered skin.
The orang minyak myth evolved alongside industrialization: first described as coated in hair oil, it later shifted to coconut oil and soot, before converging on its most widely recognised form — crude oil, the “black gold” fuelling relentless expansion. Both rubber man and orang minyak, coated in the commodities of modernity, are creatures transformed by industrial horrors, poltergeists who interrupt the cogs of the machine.
Rubber Man berlatarkan Ratanakiri, sebuah kawasan di timur laut Kemboja yang terkenal dengan rampasan tanah yang menyisihkan masyarakat pribumi dan menperuntuk tanah untuk pembalakan, perlombongan dan perladangan. Dalam video ini, Khvay Samnang bertelanjang bulat berlarian sekitar ladang getah sambil-sambil mencurah susu getah segar ke atas badannya. Dirasuk tekad, orang getah ini bukanlah tidak berdaya mahupun sentimental. Mungkin saudara dekatnya ialah orang minyak, makhluk jadian daripada kisah seram urban Melayu yang menculik wanita muda dan lolos tangkapan kerana kulitnya yang licin bersalut minyak.
Mitos orang minyak berkembang selari dengan pengindustrian: mulanya dikatakan bersalut minyak rambut, kemudiannya berukar ke minyak kelapa dan jelaga, sebelum bertumpu kepada jenis yang paling terkenal — minyak mentah, “emas hitam” itu merangsang perkembangan tanpa henti. Kedua-dua orang getah dan minyak yang bersalut bahan kemodenan adalah makhluk yang diolah oleh kedahsyatan industri, si poltergeist yang mengganggu orang-orang yang tidak penting.
Kuo Ju Ping
(b. 1908, China – d. 1966, Malaysia)
Indian Dancers
1956
Oil on board
60 cm × 77 cm
Courtesy ILHAM collection
The dancers in Kuo Ju Ping’s Indian Dancers don red kurtas while performing in the verdant landscape of a banana plantation. Arms swaying, these women are perhaps performing the folk dance kolattam, popular in South India, where dancers tap their sticks together and pair up with different partners to create different beats. Kuo here conjures an image of idyllic plantation life, brushing past its conditions of labour to depict it as a site of leisure, recreation, and cultural knowledge.
Penari dalam Indian Dancers oleh Kuo Ju Ping mengenakan kurta merah ketika menari di laman menghijau di sebuah kebun pisang. Kalau ikutkan ayunan tangan, mungkin mereka menari kolattam, sebuah tarian rakyat yang terkenal di India Selatan dengan penarinya mengetuk batang kayu dan bertukar-tukar pasangan untuk mencipta rentak berbeza. Kuo disini mewujudkan suatu gambaran akan kehidupan ladang yang indah, mengenepikan keadaan kerja keras untuk menampakkan ia sebagai tempat untuk bersenang-lenang, bersantai-santai dan pengetahuan budaya.
Minia Biabiany
(b. 1988, Guadeloupe)
Musa
2020
Single-channel HD video, colour, sound,
14 min 8 sec
Courtesy the artist, licensed by KADIST for its programs
The flowers in this video are those of the banana tree, from which the work takes its name: Musa. Believed to possess healing properties for the womb when cooked and consumed, they are now a symbol of contamination as they were polluted by chlordecone, a pesticide used prolifically in Martinique and Guadeloupe between 1972 and 1993 that harms reproductive and sexual organs. In 2014, it was estimated that 90% of Martinique and Guadeloupe had chlordecone in their blood. Touching, cutting, peeling, bathing, folding, wrapping the plants, Biabiany reflects on the sexuality of Caribbean women and the historical legacy of chattel slavery. “For four centuries / my uterus was a hull,” she writes. The views of processing banana flowers are punctuated by glimpses of hands and bellies belonging to the artist’s sister, mother, and herself; body and plant, belly and landscape are linked through intimate, embodied care.
Jantung pisang dalam video ini adalah daripada pokok pisang yang menjadi asal nama karya ini: Musa. Apabila dimasak dan dimakan, ia dipercayai mengandungi sifat menyembuh untuk rahim. Kini ia menjadi lambang pencemaran apabila dinodai chlordecone, sejenis racun serangga perosak yang digunakan meluas di Martinique dan Guadeloupe di antara 1972 dan 1993 yang membahayakan organ pembiakan dan seksual. Pada tahun 2014, duanggarkan 90% warga Martinique dan Guadeloupe mempunyai chlordecone dalam darah mereka. Dengan menyentuh, memotong, mengupas, membasahkan, melipat dan membalut tumbuhan ini, Biabiany merenung kembali seksualiti wanita Carribean dan legasi bersejarah perhambaan catel. “Selama empat abad / rahimku menjadi sekam,” tulisnya. Adegan-adegan memproses jantung pisang itu berselang-seli dengan kilasan tangan dan perut kepunyaan kakak, emak dan artis ini sendiri; tubuh dan tumbuhan, perut dan lanskap dijalin melalui penjagaan tubuh yang intim.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Minstrel Kuik
(b. 1976, Malaysia)
Residence Time
2025
Oiled photographic prints on acid-free paper,
steel structures, pebbles, palm kernel oil 12 steel structures, of 85 cm × 205 cm × 50 cm each
Co-produced by ILHAM and KADIST,
courtesy the artist
Drawn from her personal archive of photographs from 2011 to 2016, Minstrel Kuik’s six pairs of oiled photographic prints picture life and love amidst the ruinous logic of the plantation. In Residence Time, palm oil holds both the political power to structure lives in the plantation and an aesthetic power, lending a sepia-toned, translucent glow to the photographs.
For Kuik, plantation logic diffuses beyond the border of the physical plot, normalising exploitation and ethnic divisions while maintaining a false illusion of order. She witnessed plantation logic firsthand growing up in Pantai Remis, where the motorcycle riders were photographed and where her father was a Chinese middle-class smallholder plantation owner. Thus, in defiance of division, Kuik turns to assemblage. Kuik first printed each photograph as a double- sided A3 module, then submerged in palm kernel oil before stitching it together to create its final, assembled composition. The motorcycle riders, all young couples and families, pile onto their motorbikes in twos and threes, bodies pressed up against each other. This stands in contrast to the neatly distanced rows of palm trees on the verso, which Kuik echoes in the arrangement of steel frames. Kuik brings subjectivity into what is otherwise a space of pure production, conjuring a cinematic vision of everyday freedom.
Hasil daripada koleksi gambar peribadi ditangkap dari tahun 2011 hingga 2016 ialah enam pasang cetakan gambar berminyak oleh Minstrel Kuik yang menunjukkan kehidupan dan keindahan ditengah logik perladangan yang membinasakan. Melalui Residence Time, minyak sawit mempunyai kuasa politik untuk mengaturbentuk kehidupan di ladang dan kuasa estetik dengan meminjamkan rona sepia dan sinar lut cahaya kepada gambar-gambar itu.
Menurut Kuik, logik perladangan berbaur melampaui sempadan plot fizikal, membiasakan eksploitasi dan pemisahan etnik sambil mengekalkan ilusi palsu akan ketertiban. Beliau menyaksikan langsung logik perladangan ketika membesar di Pantai Remis, tempat para penunggang motosikal itu ditangkap gambar meraka dan tempat bapanya, yang dari kelas menengah Cina menjadi pemilik kecil ladang. Lantaran itu, Kuik berpaling pada asemblaj untuk menentang pemisahan. Mulanya Kuik mencetak setiap gambar sebagai modul dua sisi A3, kemudian membenamnya ke dalam minyak isirong sawit sebelum menjalinkannya bersama untuk membentuk gubahan asemblaj yang muktamad. Para penunggang motosikal, tak kira pasangan muda atau berkeluarga naik dua tiga atas motosikal, tubuh mereka dihimpitkan bersama. Ini bertentangan dengan barisan kelapa sawit yang disusun berjarak dibaliknya, yang Kuik sepadankan melalui susunan bingkai- bingkai besi. Kuik bawa masuk subjektiviti ke sesuatu yang sering dikira sebagai pengeluaran totok, lantas menerbitkan pelihatan sinematik akan kebebasan seharian.
Nguyễn Phương Linh
(b. 1985, Vietnam)
Memory of the Blind Elephant
2016
Single-channel video, colour, sound,
14 min 22 sec
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
An elephant pulls a chain across a barren land. Mangled trees lay strewn across the landscape, and tree trunks bear the deep scars of rubber tapping. Pools of pure white latex are used to manufacture rubber gloves. But the elephant remembers.
The titular blind elephant of Nguyễn Phương Linh’s moving image work has lived through decades of change in Central Vietnam. The elephant witnessed the coronation of the Jarai ethnic group’s King of Fire, and was present for the French biologist Dr Alexandre Yersin’s travels in Vietnam in the early 20th century. Now, it is a major tourist attraction. We never see the entirety of the elephant, but we learn of its labour as it trundles through an ex-colonial rubber plantation, its age and weariness evinced by the wrinkles of its skin. Memory of the Blind Elephant is a haunting and tender portrait of interspecies trauma and resilience in the face of continued exploitation.
Seekor gajah menarik rantai merentang tanah tandus. Pokok-pokok yang musnah membongkang lanskap, dan batang- batang pokok mendedahkan parut dalam torehan getah. Kumpulan susu getah digunakan untuk penghasilan sarung tangan. Namun, gajah itu tidak lupa.
Gajah buta dalam karya imej bergerak Nguyễn telah melalui dekad-dekad perubahan di Vietnam Tengah. Gajah itu menyaksikan pertabalan Raja Api kumpulan etnik Jarai, dan wujud ketika pengembaraan Dr. Alexandre Yersin, seorang ahli biologi Perancis, ke Vietnam pada awal abad ke-20. Kini, dia menjadi tarikan utama pelancong. Kita tidak pernah melihat keseluruhan gajah itu, namun kita ketahui kerja kuatnya selama gajah itu menjelajah melalui sebuah bekas ladang getah zaman penjajahan, umur dan kelesuannya terpapar melalui kedutan kulitnya. Memory of the Blind Elephant ialah sebuah potret lunak dan meluruh hati akan trauma antara spesis dan ketahanan menghadapi pengusahasilan.
Noara Quintana
(b. 1986, Brazil)
Evenings of water, Dense forest: Patauá and Caeté, and Dense forest: Mandioca e Tamba-tajá from the series Belle Époque of the Tropics
2021
Installation composed of five objects. Three
latex (natural rubber), silk organza, acrylic
paint, cotton, graphite, resin, metal, and LED
light, 48 cm × 48 cm × 10 cm each. Two latex
(natural rubber), silk organza, graphite,
30 cm × 95 cm each.
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Noara Quintana’s series Belle Époque of the Tropics draws on the legacy of the Amazon rubber boom (1879–1912), a period that fuelled colonial expansion and urban growth in Brazilian cities like Manaus and Belém. Financed by rubber wealth, Belém and Manaus were once dubbed the “Paris of the Tropics” as local elites modernised their cities and adopted European Art Nouveau aesthetics and ornamentation.
Quintana reimagines this history through an installation that suspends a tropical salon in space. In Evenings of water, the sinewy, organic lines of the Art Nouveau are translated into latex lampshades in the form of victoria regia, an Amazonian lily pad whose cultivation launched rivalries between Victorian gardeners in England. The veiny lampshades cast an eerie green glow onto two drawings on latex and silk, each picturing tropical flora in arabesque, dancing lines. Upon closer inspection, the plants in the drawings are revealed to be grafts, where two native plant species are fused into an elegant Frankenstein, bilaterally symmetrical and neatly growing to the edges of the rectangular picture plane. Quintana here points out the central irony of the Art Nouveau in Brazil. It was a domestic, aestheticised version of nature fuelled by another artificial nature: rubber plantations.
Siri Belle Époque of the Tropics oleh Noara Quintana bertitik tolak daripada legasi kepesatan industri getah Amazon (1879–1912), sebuah jangka masa yang menyumbang kepada perkembangan jajahan dan kepesatan kota di kota-kota Brazil seperti Manaus dan Belém. Laba kekayaan getah, Belém dan Manaus pernah digelar “Paris Tropika” ketika elit tempatan memajukan kota mereka dan menyerap masuk estetik dan hiasan Art Nouveau Eropah.
Quintana membayangkan semula sejarah ini melalui sebuah instalasi yang mengampai salon tropika di udara. Melalui Evenings of water, garisan alami Art Nouveau diperihal menjadi terendak lampu getah dalam bentuk victoria regia, daun teratai Amazon yang pembiakannya menyebabkan perkelahian antara tukang kebun era Victoria di England. Terendak lampu berurat itu memancarkan sinaran hijau yang merinding ke atas dua lukisan beralas sutera dan lateks, setiapnya menggambarkan tumbuhan tropika dalam garisan awan larat yang bertingkah tari. Apabila diteliti, tumbuhan di dalam lukisan itu merupakan cantuman, menyaksikan dua spesis tumbuhan asal digabung menjadi satu Frankestein yang elegan, dwisisinya sepadan dan santun menjalar ke bucu satah gambar segi empat tepat itu. Disini Quintana menjelaskan ironi utama Art Nouveau di Brazil. Versi domestik dan estetik alam semulajadi itu dibiayai oleh bahan alam buatan yang lainnya: perladangan getah.
Noara Quintana
(b. 1986, Brazil)
Evenings of water, Dense forest: Patauá and Caeté, and Dense forest: Mandioca e Tamba-tajá from the series Belle Époque of the Tropics
2021
Installation composed of five objects. Three
latex (natural rubber), silk organza, acrylic
paint, cotton, graphite, resin, metal, and LED
light, 48 cm × 48 cm × 10 cm each. Two latex
(natural rubber), silk organza, graphite,
30 cm × 95 cm each.
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Noara Quintana’s series Belle Époque of the Tropics draws on the legacy of the Amazon rubber boom (1879–1912), a period that fuelled colonial expansion and urban growth in Brazilian cities like Manaus and Belém. Financed by rubber wealth, Belém and Manaus were once dubbed the “Paris of the Tropics” as local elites modernised their cities and adopted European Art Nouveau aesthetics and ornamentation.
Quintana reimagines this history through an installation that suspends a tropical salon in space. In Evenings of water, the sinewy, organic lines of the Art Nouveau are translated into latex lampshades in the form of victoria regia, an Amazonian lily pad whose cultivation launched rivalries between Victorian gardeners in England. The veiny lampshades cast an eerie green glow onto two drawings on latex and silk, each picturing tropical flora in arabesque, dancing lines. Upon closer inspection, the plants in the drawings are revealed to be grafts, where two native plant species are fused into an elegant Frankenstein, bilaterally symmetrical and neatly growing to the edges of the rectangular picture plane. Quintana here points out the central irony of the Art Nouveau in Brazil. It was a domestic, aestheticised version of nature fuelled by another artificial nature: rubber plantations.
Siri Belle Époque of the Tropics oleh Noara Quintana bertitik tolak daripada legasi kepesatan industri getah Amazon (1879–1912), sebuah jangka masa yang menyumbang kepada perkembangan jajahan dan kepesatan kota di kota-kota Brazil seperti Manaus dan Belém. Laba kekayaan getah, Belém dan Manaus pernah digelar “Paris Tropika” ketika elit tempatan memajukan kota mereka dan menyerap masuk estetik dan hiasan Art Nouveau Eropah.
Quintana membayangkan semula sejarah ini melalui sebuah instalasi yang mengampai salon tropika di udara. Melalui Evenings of water, garisan alami Art Nouveau diperihal menjadi terendak lampu getah dalam bentuk victoria regia, daun teratai Amazon yang pembiakannya menyebabkan perkelahian antara tukang kebun era Victoria di England. Terendak lampu berurat itu memancarkan sinaran hijau yang merinding ke atas dua lukisan beralas sutera dan lateks, setiapnya menggambarkan tumbuhan tropika dalam garisan awan larat yang bertingkah tari. Apabila diteliti, tumbuhan di dalam lukisan itu merupakan cantuman, menyaksikan dua spesis tumbuhan asal digabung menjadi satu Frankestein yang elegan, dwisisinya sepadan dan santun menjalar ke bucu satah gambar segi empat tepat itu. Disini Quintana menjelaskan ironi utama Art Nouveau di Brazil. Versi domestik dan estetik alam semulajadi itu dibiayai oleh bahan alam buatan yang lainnya: perladangan getah.
Pratchaya Phinthong
(b. 1974, Thailand)
The Organ of Destiny
2022
Diptych, polished lead and tin melted from
unexploded ordnance of war
70 × 25 cm and 100 cm × 25 cm
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped an estimated 250 million bombs on Laos. Most of these bombs were launched from Isaan, a region in Thailand that shares a long border with Laos, and hometown to artist Pratchaya Phinthong.
In Today will take care of tomorrow, Phinthong filmed while walking through a forest in Laos with an infrared camera. Unfolding over forty minutes, the video captures a landscape that still bears scars from heavy U.S. aerial bombardment: branches are twisted, trunks are pocked, and a Buddhist temple had to be buttressed in order to keep it standing. Over half a century since the Second Indochina War, these trees still stand tall, and the temple still hosts devotees. With time and resilience, repair can take its course.
The video is reflected onto a sculpture titled The Organ of Destiny, in which lead and tin from unexploded ordnances of war are cast and polished into mirror-like surfaces, resembling the mirrors used to treat phantom limb syndrome. The work is part of an ongoing collaboration with the people of Napia Village in northeastern Laos, where there is a local industry in melting down unexploded munitions into tourist trinkets and cutlery. In an act of metamorphosis, Phinthong channels leftover metals of war toward healing, directing the flow of this “mineral and karmic economy” toward healing.
Sepanjang tahun 1964 hingga 1973, Amerika menggugurkan dengan anggaran sebanyak 250 juta bom di Laos. Kebanyakkan bom- bom ini dilancarkan dari Isaan, sebuah kawasan di Thailand yang bersempadan panjang dengan Laos, dan juga kampung halaman artis Pratchaya Phinthong.
Lewat Today will take care of tomorrow, Phinthong merakam dengan sebuah kamera infrared menelusuri sebuah hutan di Laos. Selama lebih dari empat puluh minit, video ini merakamkan sebuah lanskap yang masih menanggung parut pengeboman udara Amerika yang dasyat: dahan berpintal, batang pokok berbopeng, dan sebuah kuil Buddha yang perlu bersagang untuk wujud teguh. Separuh abad telah beredar sejak Perang Indocina Kedua dan pokok- pokok ini masih lagi bertahan, dan kuil itu masih menerima penganutnya. Waktu dan semangat hidup akan mengubati segalanya.
Video ini dipantulkan ke atas sebuah arca bertajuk The Organ of Destiny, yang mana plumbum dan besi daripada sisa-sisa ordnans perang diacu dan dikilatkan menjadi permukaan semirip cermin, menyerupai cermin yang digunakan untuk merawat sindrom anggota maya. Karya ini sebahagian daripada kerjasama yang sedang dijalankan dengan warga Kampung Napia di timur laut Laos, di mana terdapat sebuah industri tempatan yang mencairkan sisa-sisa senjata menjadi barang kodi dan sudu garpu untuk pelancong. Melalui metamorfosis, Pinthong mengalurkan sisa logam peperangan ke arah penyembuhan, mengalirkan jalan “ekonomi mineral dan karma” menuju penyembuhan.
Pratchaya Phinthong
(b. 1974, Thailand)
Today will take care of tomorrow
2022
Single-channel video, colour, sound, footage from an infrared camera, 40 min
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped an estimated 250 million bombs on Laos. Most of these bombs were launched from Isaan, a region in Thailand that shares a long border with Laos, and hometown to artist Pratchaya Phinthong.
In Today will take care of tomorrow, Phinthong filmed while walking through a forest in Laos with an infrared camera. Unfolding over forty minutes, the video captures a landscape that still bears scars from heavy U.S. aerial bombardment: branches are twisted, trunks are pocked, and a Buddhist temple had to be buttressed in order to keep it standing. Over half a century since the Second Indochina War, these trees still stand tall, and the temple still hosts devotees. With time and resilience, repair can take its course.
The video is reflected onto a sculpture titled The Organ of Destiny, in which lead and tin from unexploded ordnances of war are cast and polished into mirror-like surfaces, resembling the mirrors used to treat phantom limb syndrome. The work is part of an ongoing collaboration with the people of Napia Village in northeastern Laos, where there is a local industry in melting down unexploded munitions into tourist trinkets and cutlery. In an act of metamorphosis, Phinthong channels leftover metals of war toward healing, directing the flow of this “mineral and karmic economy” toward healing.
Sepanjang tahun 1964 hingga 1973, Amerika menggugurkan dengan anggaran sebanyak 250 juta bom di Laos. Kebanyakkan bom- bom ini dilancarkan dari Isaan, sebuah kawasan di Thailand yang bersempadan panjang dengan Laos, dan juga kampung halaman artis Pratchaya Phinthong.
Lewat Today will take care of tomorrow, Phinthong merakam dengan sebuah kamera infrared menelusuri sebuah hutan di Laos. Selama lebih dari empat puluh minit, video ini merakamkan sebuah lanskap yang masih menanggung parut pengeboman udara Amerika yang dasyat: dahan berpintal, batang pokok berbopeng, dan sebuah kuil Buddha yang perlu bersagang untuk wujud teguh. Separuh abad telah beredar sejak Perang Indocina Kedua dan pokok- pokok ini masih lagi bertahan, dan kuil itu masih menerima penganutnya. Waktu dan semangat hidup akan mengubati segalanya.
Video ini dipantulkan ke atas sebuah arca bertajuk The Organ of Destiny, yang mana plumbum dan besi daripada sisa-sisa ordnans perang diacu dan dikilatkan menjadi permukaan semirip cermin, menyerupai cermin yang digunakan untuk merawat sindrom anggota maya. Karya ini sebahagian daripada kerjasama yang sedang dijalankan dengan warga Kampung Napia di timur laut Laos, di mana terdapat sebuah industri tempatan yang mencairkan sisa-sisa senjata menjadi barang kodi dan sudu garpu untuk pelancong. Melalui metamorfosis, Pinthong mengalurkan sisa logam peperangan ke arah penyembuhan, mengalirkan jalan “ekonomi mineral dan karma” menuju penyembuhan.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Carrying)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Cutting)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Dragging)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Hanging)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Hoeing)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Holding)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Kneeling)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Laying)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Planting)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Sancintya Mohini Simpson
(b. 1991, Australia)
And words were whispered (Sitting)
2019
Watercolours and gouaches on
handmade wasli paper
63 cm × 88 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were essentially agrestic slaves, paid negligible wages for exhausting hours, prohibited from leaving the plantation, and regularly assaulted by employers.
Each of the ten scenes in the series offers an intimate portrait of life in the fields. Most of Simpson’s drawings depict seemingly innocuous acts of labour such as hoeing, planting, and cutting, but in some depict acts of violence perpetrated against the women. While confronting a sombre and tragic history, rather than seeking to crucify regimes, Simpson instead focuses on finding reconciliation through acts of revelation and exposure. What she proposes is a new speculative archive where loss and healing can coexist.
And words were whispered oleh Sancitya Mohini Simpson ialah siri sepuluh karya atas kertas berdasarkan pengalaman langsung wanita India yang dibawa ke daerah Natal di Afrika Selatan dari dekad 1860-an sehingga awal 1900-an untuk bekerja di ladang teh dan tebu ketika aparteid. Babak yang sering tidak diacuh sejarah penjajahan ini begitu dekat dengan Simpson kerana keluarga belah ibunya telah diberi kontrak untuk bekerja di ladang gula di Natal. Buruh-buruh kontrak ini, yang diberi gelaran hina ‘kuli’ boleh dikatakan adalah hamba perladangan. Mereka dibayar gaji tidak setimpal dengan tempoh kerja yang melelahkan, dilarang dari meninggalkan ladang dan kerap diganggu oleh majikan.
Setiap sepuluh babak dalam siri ini menawarkan pemandangan intim akan kehidupan di ladang. Kebanyakkan lukisan Simpson memaparkan cara kerja yang tidak zahir memudaratkan seperti mencangkul, menanam benih, dan mencantas, namun ada juga yang memaparkan aksi keganasan yang dilakukan terhadap wanita. Apabila berdepan dengan sejarah yang sayu dan tragis, Simpson tidak berniat untuk menghukum rejim, sebaliknya beliau menumpukan perhatian kepada penyembuhan dan mencari perdamaian menerusi ilham dan pendedahan. Beliau sarankan sebuah arkib spekulatif agar kehilangan dan penyembuhan boleh wujud bersama.
Santiago Yahuarcani
(b. 1961, Peru)
Castigos del caucho (Rubber Punishments)
2017
Ten natural dyes and paint on vegetable bark,
42 cm × 52 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
The stories of violence told in Castigos del caucho were transmitted orally from the artist Santiago Yahuarcani’s grandfather, who survived the Putumayo Genocide (1879–1912). During this time, an estimated 30,000 indigenous people, including Yahuarcani’s Uitoto ancestors, were killed by members of the Peruvian Amazon Company at the peak of the Amazon rubber boom. Yahuarcani’s paintings illustrates the methods of torture enacted by plantation managers to coerce indigenous people into harvesting of wild rubber: beatings, burning, branding, crucifixion, and more.
An eyewitness account corroborates one of the stories in Yahuarcani’s paintings, perpetrated by the Peruvian- Bolivian plantation manager Armando Normand at Matanzas station.
“Norman[d] suspended another Indian woman
from four stakes by her hands and feet and,
after giving her one hundred lashes, he took a
Peruvian flag, which happened to be handy,
and tearing it to pieces and sousing it with
kerosene he wound it around her feet and set
fire to it. As soon as the woman started to run
off, crazed with the awful agony, he grasped his
Mauser and practised target-shooting with her
until he brought her down.”
The events narrated in Castigos del caucho have become a touchpoint for Yahuarcani, a self-taught artist whose practice expresses the rich spiritual world of the indigenous Amazonians but is indelibly inflected by the violence in their history.
Kisah-kisah keganasan yang diceritakan Castigos del caucho oleh artis Santiago Yahuarcani disampaikan secara lisan dari datuknya yang terselamat daripada Pembunuhan Beramai-Ramai Putumayo (1879–1912). Ketika itu, dianggarkan 30,000 warga pribumi termasuk nenek moyang Uitoto Yahuarcani dibunuh oleh ahli Peruvian Amazon Company di kemuncak kepesatan penanaman getah Amazon. Lukisan-lukisan Yahuarcani menggambarkan kaedah penyeksaan yang dijalankan pengurus ladang untuk memaksa orang pribumi untuk menuai hasih getah liar: sepak pukul, bakar, selar, salib dan banyak lagi.
Sebuah penyataan saksi mendukung salah satu kisah daripada lukisan Yahuarcani, yang dilakukan oleh Armando Normand, seorang pengurus ladang warga Peru-Bolivia di stesen Matanzas.
“Norman(d) memancang wanita India lain di
kaki dan tangannya, dan setelah memberinya
seratus sebatan, dia mengambil dan mencarik
sehelai bendera Peru yang berdekatan,
disimbahnya dengan minyak tanah dan
diikatkannnya ke kaki wanita itu lantas
menyalakan api padanya. Sebaik sahaja wanita
itu mahu melarikan diri dek seksaan dasyat itu,
Norman mengambil senapang Mausernya dan
berlatih menembak sasaran sehingga wanita itu
rebah kerananya.”
Kejadian-kejadian yang dikisahkan menerusi Castigos del Caucho menjadi tumpuan untuk Yahuarcani, seorang seniman belajar sendiri yang praktiknya memaparkan dunia pribumi Amazon yang sarat dengan kerohanian namun berkait dengan keganasan dalam sejarah mereka yang sukar dilenyapkan.
Santiago Yahuarcani
(b. 1961, Peru)
Castigos del caucho (Rubber Punishments)
2017
Ten natural dyes and paint on vegetable bark,
42 cm × 52 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
The stories of violence told in Castigos del caucho were transmitted orally from the artist Santiago Yahuarcani’s grandfather, who survived the Putumayo Genocide (1879–1912). During this time, an estimated 30,000 indigenous people, including Yahuarcani’s Uitoto ancestors, were killed by members of the Peruvian Amazon Company at the peak of the Amazon rubber boom. Yahuarcani’s paintings illustrates the methods of torture enacted by plantation managers to coerce indigenous people into harvesting of wild rubber: beatings, burning, branding, crucifixion, and more.
An eyewitness account corroborates one of the stories in Yahuarcani’s paintings, perpetrated by the Peruvian- Bolivian plantation manager Armando Normand at Matanzas station.
“Norman[d] suspended another Indian woman
from four stakes by her hands and feet and,
after giving her one hundred lashes, he took a
Peruvian flag, which happened to be handy,
and tearing it to pieces and sousing it with
kerosene he wound it around her feet and set
fire to it. As soon as the woman started to run
off, crazed with the awful agony, he grasped his
Mauser and practised target-shooting with her
until he brought her down.”
The events narrated in Castigos del caucho have become a touchpoint for Yahuarcani, a self-taught artist whose practice expresses the rich spiritual world of the indigenous Amazonians but is indelibly inflected by the violence in their history.
Kisah-kisah keganasan yang diceritakan Castigos del caucho oleh artis Santiago Yahuarcani disampaikan secara lisan dari datuknya yang terselamat daripada Pembunuhan Beramai-Ramai Putumayo (1879–1912). Ketika itu, dianggarkan 30,000 warga pribumi termasuk nenek moyang Uitoto Yahuarcani dibunuh oleh ahli Peruvian Amazon Company di kemuncak kepesatan penanaman getah Amazon. Lukisan-lukisan Yahuarcani menggambarkan kaedah penyeksaan yang dijalankan pengurus ladang untuk memaksa orang pribumi untuk menuai hasih getah liar: sepak pukul, bakar, selar, salib dan banyak lagi.
Sebuah penyataan saksi mendukung salah satu kisah daripada lukisan Yahuarcani, yang dilakukan oleh Armando Normand, seorang pengurus ladang warga Peru-Bolivia di stesen Matanzas.
“Norman(d) memancang wanita India lain di
kaki dan tangannya, dan setelah memberinya
seratus sebatan, dia mengambil dan mencarik
sehelai bendera Peru yang berdekatan,
disimbahnya dengan minyak tanah dan
diikatkannnya ke kaki wanita itu lantas
menyalakan api padanya. Sebaik sahaja wanita
itu mahu melarikan diri dek seksaan dasyat itu,
Norman mengambil senapang Mausernya dan
berlatih menembak sasaran sehingga wanita itu
rebah kerananya.”
Kejadian-kejadian yang dikisahkan menerusi Castigos del Caucho menjadi tumpuan untuk Yahuarcani, seorang seniman belajar sendiri yang praktiknya memaparkan dunia pribumi Amazon yang sarat dengan kerohanian namun berkait dengan keganasan dalam sejarah mereka yang sukar dilenyapkan.
Santiago Yahuarcani
(b. 1961, Peru)
Castigos del caucho (Rubber Punishments)
2017
Ten natural dyes and paint on vegetable bark,
42 cm × 52 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
The stories of violence told in Castigos del caucho were transmitted orally from the artist Santiago Yahuarcani’s grandfather, who survived the Putumayo Genocide (1879–1912). During this time, an estimated 30,000 indigenous people, including Yahuarcani’s Uitoto ancestors, were killed by members of the Peruvian Amazon Company at the peak of the Amazon rubber boom. Yahuarcani’s paintings illustrates the methods of torture enacted by plantation managers to coerce indigenous people into harvesting of wild rubber: beatings, burning, branding, crucifixion, and more.
An eyewitness account corroborates one of the stories in Yahuarcani’s paintings, perpetrated by the Peruvian- Bolivian plantation manager Armando Normand at Matanzas station.
“Norman[d] suspended another Indian woman
from four stakes by her hands and feet and,
after giving her one hundred lashes, he took a
Peruvian flag, which happened to be handy,
and tearing it to pieces and sousing it with
kerosene he wound it around her feet and set
fire to it. As soon as the woman started to run
off, crazed with the awful agony, he grasped his
Mauser and practised target-shooting with her
until he brought her down.”
The events narrated in Castigos del caucho have become a touchpoint for Yahuarcani, a self-taught artist whose practice expresses the rich spiritual world of the indigenous Amazonians but is indelibly inflected by the violence in their history.
Kisah-kisah keganasan yang diceritakan Castigos del caucho oleh artis Santiago Yahuarcani disampaikan secara lisan dari datuknya yang terselamat daripada Pembunuhan Beramai-Ramai Putumayo (1879–1912). Ketika itu, dianggarkan 30,000 warga pribumi termasuk nenek moyang Uitoto Yahuarcani dibunuh oleh ahli Peruvian Amazon Company di kemuncak kepesatan penanaman getah Amazon. Lukisan-lukisan Yahuarcani menggambarkan kaedah penyeksaan yang dijalankan pengurus ladang untuk memaksa orang pribumi untuk menuai hasih getah liar: sepak pukul, bakar, selar, salib dan banyak lagi.
Sebuah penyataan saksi mendukung salah satu kisah daripada lukisan Yahuarcani, yang dilakukan oleh Armando Normand, seorang pengurus ladang warga Peru-Bolivia di stesen Matanzas.
“Norman(d) memancang wanita India lain di
kaki dan tangannya, dan setelah memberinya
seratus sebatan, dia mengambil dan mencarik
sehelai bendera Peru yang berdekatan,
disimbahnya dengan minyak tanah dan
diikatkannnya ke kaki wanita itu lantas
menyalakan api padanya. Sebaik sahaja wanita
itu mahu melarikan diri dek seksaan dasyat itu,
Norman mengambil senapang Mausernya dan
berlatih menembak sasaran sehingga wanita itu
rebah kerananya.”
Kejadian-kejadian yang dikisahkan menerusi Castigos del Caucho menjadi tumpuan untuk Yahuarcani, seorang seniman belajar sendiri yang praktiknya memaparkan dunia pribumi Amazon yang sarat dengan kerohanian namun berkait dengan keganasan dalam sejarah mereka yang sukar dilenyapkan.
Santiago Yahuarcani
(b. 1961, Peru)
Castigos del caucho (Rubber Punishments)
2017
Ten natural dyes and paint on vegetable bark,
42 cm × 52 cm each
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
The stories of violence told in Castigos del caucho were transmitted orally from the artist Santiago Yahuarcani’s grandfather, who survived the Putumayo Genocide (1879–1912). During this time, an estimated 30,000 indigenous people, including Yahuarcani’s Uitoto ancestors, were killed by members of the Peruvian Amazon Company at the peak of the Amazon rubber boom. Yahuarcani’s paintings illustrates the methods of torture enacted by plantation managers to coerce indigenous people into harvesting of wild rubber: beatings, burning, branding, crucifixion, and more.
An eyewitness account corroborates one of the stories in Yahuarcani’s paintings, perpetrated by the Peruvian- Bolivian plantation manager Armando Normand at Matanzas station.
“Norman[d] suspended another Indian woman
from four stakes by her hands and feet and,
after giving her one hundred lashes, he took a
Peruvian flag, which happened to be handy,
and tearing it to pieces and sousing it with
kerosene he wound it around her feet and set
fire to it. As soon as the woman started to run
off, crazed with the awful agony, he grasped his
Mauser and practised target-shooting with her
until he brought her down.”
The events narrated in Castigos del caucho have become a touchpoint for Yahuarcani, a self-taught artist whose practice expresses the rich spiritual world of the indigenous Amazonians but is indelibly inflected by the violence in their history.
Kisah-kisah keganasan yang diceritakan Castigos del caucho oleh artis Santiago Yahuarcani disampaikan secara lisan dari datuknya yang terselamat daripada Pembunuhan Beramai-Ramai Putumayo (1879–1912). Ketika itu, dianggarkan 30,000 warga pribumi termasuk nenek moyang Uitoto Yahuarcani dibunuh oleh ahli Peruvian Amazon Company di kemuncak kepesatan penanaman getah Amazon. Lukisan-lukisan Yahuarcani menggambarkan kaedah penyeksaan yang dijalankan pengurus ladang untuk memaksa orang pribumi untuk menuai hasih getah liar: sepak pukul, bakar, selar, salib dan banyak lagi.
Sebuah penyataan saksi mendukung salah satu kisah daripada lukisan Yahuarcani, yang dilakukan oleh Armando Normand, seorang pengurus ladang warga Peru-Bolivia di stesen Matanzas.
“Norman(d) memancang wanita India lain di
kaki dan tangannya, dan setelah memberinya
seratus sebatan, dia mengambil dan mencarik
sehelai bendera Peru yang berdekatan,
disimbahnya dengan minyak tanah dan
diikatkannnya ke kaki wanita itu lantas
menyalakan api padanya. Sebaik sahaja wanita
itu mahu melarikan diri dek seksaan dasyat itu,
Norman mengambil senapang Mausernya dan
berlatih menembak sasaran sehingga wanita itu
rebah kerananya.”
Kejadian-kejadian yang dikisahkan menerusi Castigos del Caucho menjadi tumpuan untuk Yahuarcani, seorang seniman belajar sendiri yang praktiknya memaparkan dunia pribumi Amazon yang sarat dengan kerohanian namun berkait dengan keganasan dalam sejarah mereka yang sukar dilenyapkan.
Sg. Bumbun × Pulau Kempas × AWAS!MAWAS!
(based in Malaysia)
Documentation of performance
2025
Single-channel video, colour, sound
Duration variable
Courtesy the artist
In 2024, the puppet parade collective AWAS!MAWAS! conducted a series of workshops with the children from Pulau Kempas, a community of Temuan people indigenous to the forests of the Western peninsular, and the children of Sungai Bumbun, a community of Mah Meri indigenous to Pulau Carey. These workshops culminated in a parade and performance, where children, clad in puppets of their own design, staged a play about issues affecting them and their communities. Developed with consultation with community elders, these stories use parades and performances as fugitive forms to smuggle socially conscious stories into a public domain.
The children of Sg. Bumbun performed a story about a boy named Sammy who couldn’t find materials to make traditional Mah Meri masks and weavings as palm oil plantations have taken over mangrove and forest land. He embarks on an adventure, asking his ancestral spirit Moyang Tok Naning for guidance and eventually breaking the barrier between river and sea, allowing salt water to flow back into the estuary and mangroves to grow again.
The children of Pulau Kempas began their story with the children accidentally selling a piece of land to evil creatures for what they thought was the high price of RM15. The confrontation between village and creatures eventually comes to a head, and the village comes together to write a memorandum. They summon their ancestral spirit Moyang Lanjut with gentak balai, a traditional dance ritual, who provides advice on who to deliver the memorandum to.
Pada tahun 2024, kolektif perarakan patung AWAS!MAWAS! menjalankan beberapa bengkel dengan kanak-kanak dari Pulau Kempas, sebuah masyarakat orang asli Temuan yang berasal dari hutan di Semenanjung barat, dan kanak-kanak Sungai Bumbun, sebuah masyarakat Mah Meri asal Pulau Carey. Kemuncak bengkel-bengkel ini ialah perarakan dan persembahan oleh kanak- kanak ini mengenai isu yang menghantui diri dan masyarakat mereka sambil menyarung sarung patung rekaan masing-masing. Kisah- kisah yang dirujuk dengan orang tua-tua ini menggunakan perarakan dan persembahan sebagai kelainan untuk menyampaikan cerita kesedaran sosial kepada orang awam.
Kanak-kanak Sg. Bumbun menceritakan sebuah kisah tentang budak bernama Sammy yang tidak dapat menemui bahan untuk membuat topeng dan anyaman tradisi Mah Meri semenjak ladang kelapa sawit mengambil alih kawasan paya bakau dan tanah hutan. Dia menjalani satu pengembaraan dengan memohon kepada semangat nenek moyangnya, Moyang Tok Naning untuk petunjuk dan akhirnya memecahkan benteng antara sungai dan laut membenarkan air masin untuk mengalir ke dalam muara dan menjadikan pokok bakau tumbuh semula.
Kanak-kanak Pulau Kempas memulakan kisah mereka dengan kanak-kanak yang secara tidak sengaja telah menjual sebidang tanah kepada makhluk jahat sebanyak RM15 yang mereka sangkakan sebagai harga yang tinggi. Pertembungan antara orang kampung dan makhluk jahat akhirnya tidak berganjak dan orang kampung beramai-ramai menulis memorandum. Mereka menari gentak balai, sebuah upacara tarian tradisi untuk menyeru semangat Moyang Lanjut yang bakal memberi nasihat tentang kepada siapa memorandum itu harus diserahkan.
Sg. Bumbun × Pulau Kempas × AWAS!MAWAS!
(based in Malaysia)
Mawas
2024–2025
Bamboo, papier mâché, fabric, nipah leaves
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist
In 2024, the puppet parade collective AWAS!MAWAS! conducted a series of workshops with the children from Pulau Kempas, a community of Temuan people indigenous to the forests of the Western peninsular, and the children of Sungai Bumbun, a community of Mah Meri indigenous to Pulau Carey. These workshops culminated in a parade and performance, where children, clad in puppets of their own design, staged a play about issues affecting them and their communities. Developed with consultation with community elders, these stories use parades and performances as fugitive forms to smuggle socially conscious stories into a public domain.
The children of Sg. Bumbun performed a story about a boy named Sammy who couldn’t find materials to make traditional Mah Meri masks and weavings as palm oil plantations have taken over mangrove and forest land. He embarks on an adventure, asking his ancestral spirit Moyang Tok Naning for guidance and eventually breaking the barrier between river and sea, allowing salt water to flow back into the estuary and mangroves to grow again.
The children of Pulau Kempas began their story with the children accidentally selling a piece of land to evil creatures for what they thought was the high price of RM15. The confrontation between village and creatures eventually comes to a head, and the village comes together to write a memorandum. They summon their ancestral spirit Moyang Lanjut with gentak balai, a traditional dance ritual, who provides advice on who to deliver the memorandum to.
Pada tahun 2024, kolektif perarakan patung AWAS!MAWAS! menjalankan beberapa bengkel dengan kanak-kanak dari Pulau Kempas, sebuah masyarakat orang asli Temuan yang berasal dari hutan di Semenanjung barat, dan kanak-kanak Sungai Bumbun, sebuah masyarakat Mah Meri asal Pulau Carey. Kemuncak bengkel-bengkel ini ialah perarakan dan persembahan oleh kanak- kanak ini mengenai isu yang menghantui diri dan masyarakat mereka sambil menyarung sarung patung rekaan masing-masing. Kisah- kisah yang dirujuk dengan orang tua-tua ini menggunakan perarakan dan persembahan sebagai kelainan untuk menyampaikan cerita kesedaran sosial kepada orang awam.
Kanak-kanak Sg. Bumbun menceritakan sebuah kisah tentang budak bernama Sammy yang tidak dapat menemui bahan untuk membuat topeng dan anyaman tradisi Mah Meri semenjak ladang kelapa sawit mengambil alih kawasan paya bakau dan tanah hutan. Dia menjalani satu pengembaraan dengan memohon kepada semangat nenek moyangnya, Moyang Tok Naning untuk petunjuk dan akhirnya memecahkan benteng antara sungai dan laut membenarkan air masin untuk mengalir ke dalam muara dan menjadikan pokok bakau tumbuh semula.
Kanak-kanak Pulau Kempas memulakan kisah mereka dengan kanak-kanak yang secara tidak sengaja telah menjual sebidang tanah kepada makhluk jahat sebanyak RM15 yang mereka sangkakan sebagai harga yang tinggi. Pertembungan antara orang kampung dan makhluk jahat akhirnya tidak berganjak dan orang kampung beramai-ramai menulis memorandum. Mereka menari gentak balai, sebuah upacara tarian tradisi untuk menyeru semangat Moyang Lanjut yang bakal memberi nasihat tentang kepada siapa memorandum itu harus diserahkan.
Sg. Bumbun × Pulau Kempas × AWAS!MAWAS!
(based in Malaysia)
Moyang Lanjut
2024–2025
Bamboo, papier mâché, PVC pipes, nipah leaves
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist
In 2024, the puppet parade collective AWAS!MAWAS! conducted a series of workshops with the children from Pulau Kempas, a community of Temuan people indigenous to the forests of the Western peninsular, and the children of Sungai Bumbun, a community of Mah Meri indigenous to Pulau Carey. These workshops culminated in a parade and performance, where children, clad in puppets of their own design, staged a play about issues affecting them and their communities. Developed with consultation with community elders, these stories use parades and performances as fugitive forms to smuggle socially conscious stories into a public domain.
The children of Sg. Bumbun performed a story about a boy named Sammy who couldn’t find materials to make traditional Mah Meri masks and weavings as palm oil plantations have taken over mangrove and forest land. He embarks on an adventure, asking his ancestral spirit Moyang Tok Naning for guidance and eventually breaking the barrier between river and sea, allowing salt water to flow back into the estuary and mangroves to grow again.
The children of Pulau Kempas began their story with the children accidentally selling a piece of land to evil creatures for what they thought was the high price of RM15. The confrontation between village and creatures eventually comes to a head, and the village comes together to write a memorandum. They summon their ancestral spirit Moyang Lanjut with gentak balai, a traditional dance ritual, who provides advice on who to deliver the memorandum to.
Pada tahun 2024, kolektif perarakan patung AWAS!MAWAS! menjalankan beberapa bengkel dengan kanak-kanak dari Pulau Kempas, sebuah masyarakat orang asli Temuan yang berasal dari hutan di Semenanjung barat, dan kanak-kanak Sungai Bumbun, sebuah masyarakat Mah Meri asal Pulau Carey. Kemuncak bengkel-bengkel ini ialah perarakan dan persembahan oleh kanak- kanak ini mengenai isu yang menghantui diri dan masyarakat mereka sambil menyarung sarung patung rekaan masing-masing. Kisah- kisah yang dirujuk dengan orang tua-tua ini menggunakan perarakan dan persembahan sebagai kelainan untuk menyampaikan cerita kesedaran sosial kepada orang awam.
Kanak-kanak Sg. Bumbun menceritakan sebuah kisah tentang budak bernama Sammy yang tidak dapat menemui bahan untuk membuat topeng dan anyaman tradisi Mah Meri semenjak ladang kelapa sawit mengambil alih kawasan paya bakau dan tanah hutan. Dia menjalani satu pengembaraan dengan memohon kepada semangat nenek moyangnya, Moyang Tok Naning untuk petunjuk dan akhirnya memecahkan benteng antara sungai dan laut membenarkan air masin untuk mengalir ke dalam muara dan menjadikan pokok bakau tumbuh semula.
Kanak-kanak Pulau Kempas memulakan kisah mereka dengan kanak-kanak yang secara tidak sengaja telah menjual sebidang tanah kepada makhluk jahat sebanyak RM15 yang mereka sangkakan sebagai harga yang tinggi. Pertembungan antara orang kampung dan makhluk jahat akhirnya tidak berganjak dan orang kampung beramai-ramai menulis memorandum. Mereka menari gentak balai, sebuah upacara tarian tradisi untuk menyeru semangat Moyang Lanjut yang bakal memberi nasihat tentang kepada siapa memorandum itu harus diserahkan.
Sg. Bumbun × Pulau Kempas × AWAS!MAWAS!
(based in Malaysia)
Moyang Tok Naning
2024–2025
Bamboo, papier mâché, fabric, PVC pipes
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist
In 2024, the puppet parade collective AWAS!MAWAS! conducted a series of workshops with the children from Pulau Kempas, a community of Temuan people indigenous to the forests of the Western peninsular, and the children of Sungai Bumbun, a community of Mah Meri indigenous to Pulau Carey. These workshops culminated in a parade and performance, where children, clad in puppets of their own design, staged a play about issues affecting them and their communities. Developed with consultation with community elders, these stories use parades and performances as fugitive forms to smuggle socially conscious stories into a public domain.
The children of Sg. Bumbun performed a story about a boy named Sammy who couldn’t find materials to make traditional Mah Meri masks and weavings as palm oil plantations have taken over mangrove and forest land. He embarks on an adventure, asking his ancestral spirit Moyang Tok Naning for guidance and eventually breaking the barrier between river and sea, allowing salt water to flow back into the estuary and mangroves to grow again.
The children of Pulau Kempas began their story with the children accidentally selling a piece of land to evil creatures for what they thought was the high price of RM15. The confrontation between village and creatures eventually comes to a head, and the village comes together to write a memorandum. They summon their ancestral spirit Moyang Lanjut with gentak balai, a traditional dance ritual, who provides advice on who to deliver the memorandum to.
Pada tahun 2024, kolektif perarakan patung AWAS!MAWAS! menjalankan beberapa bengkel dengan kanak-kanak dari Pulau Kempas, sebuah masyarakat orang asli Temuan yang berasal dari hutan di Semenanjung barat, dan kanak-kanak Sungai Bumbun, sebuah masyarakat Mah Meri asal Pulau Carey. Kemuncak bengkel-bengkel ini ialah perarakan dan persembahan oleh kanak- kanak ini mengenai isu yang menghantui diri dan masyarakat mereka sambil menyarung sarung patung rekaan masing-masing. Kisah- kisah yang dirujuk dengan orang tua-tua ini menggunakan perarakan dan persembahan sebagai kelainan untuk menyampaikan cerita kesedaran sosial kepada orang awam.
Kanak-kanak Sg. Bumbun menceritakan sebuah kisah tentang budak bernama Sammy yang tidak dapat menemui bahan untuk membuat topeng dan anyaman tradisi Mah Meri semenjak ladang kelapa sawit mengambil alih kawasan paya bakau dan tanah hutan. Dia menjalani satu pengembaraan dengan memohon kepada semangat nenek moyangnya, Moyang Tok Naning untuk petunjuk dan akhirnya memecahkan benteng antara sungai dan laut membenarkan air masin untuk mengalir ke dalam muara dan menjadikan pokok bakau tumbuh semula.
Kanak-kanak Pulau Kempas memulakan kisah mereka dengan kanak-kanak yang secara tidak sengaja telah menjual sebidang tanah kepada makhluk jahat sebanyak RM15 yang mereka sangkakan sebagai harga yang tinggi. Pertembungan antara orang kampung dan makhluk jahat akhirnya tidak berganjak dan orang kampung beramai-ramai menulis memorandum. Mereka menari gentak balai, sebuah upacara tarian tradisi untuk menyeru semangat Moyang Lanjut yang bakal memberi nasihat tentang kepada siapa memorandum itu harus diserahkan.
Taloi Havini
(b. 1981, b. Autonomous Region of
Bougainville, based in Australia)
Beroana (Shell Money) I
2015
Earthenware, clear glaze, steel wire
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Beroana, or shell money, is a form of currency made from porcelain, stoneware and earthenware. In the Pacific Islands where Taloi Havini was born, beroana is more than just a system of payment. It is an integral part of ceremonies, including weddings, funerals and family reconciliations, and when not in use, is stored in sacred vessels in high secret keeping places. The whirling, freely suspended spiral of beroana, in earthy tones of cream to terracotta, speak a poetics of exchange beyond coercion. The extraction of natural resources is here put toward a cherished object, one that acts toward unity rather than division.
Beroana, atau wang cengkerang ialah sejenis matawang diperbuat daripada porselin dan barangan tembikar. Di Kepulauan Pasifik, tempat Taloi Havini dilahirkan, beroana bukan sekadar sistem bayaran. Ia adalah sebahagian penting upacara keramaian termasuklah perkahwinan, pengebumian dan perdamaian keluarga, dan apabila tidak digunakan, disimpan di dalam bekas suci di tempat persembunyian rahsia. Lingkaran beroana yang berpusar dan mengapung, dari rona krim ke terracota, mengungkapkan keindahan pertukaran melepasi batas pemaksaan. Pengeluaran hasil semulajadi disini digubah menjadi barangan berharga, menjurus kepada penyatuan dan bukan pemisahan.
Taloi Havini
(b. 1981, b. Autonomous Region of
Bougainville, based in Australia)
Beroana (Shell Money) I
2015
Earthenware, clear glaze, steel wire
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Beroana, or shell money, is a form of currency made from porcelain, stoneware and earthenware. In the Pacific Islands where Taloi Havini was born, beroana is more than just a system of payment. It is an integral part of ceremonies, including weddings, funerals and family reconciliations, and when not in use, is stored in sacred vessels in high secret keeping places. The whirling, freely suspended spiral of beroana, in earthy tones of cream to terracotta, speak a poetics of exchange beyond coercion. The extraction of natural resources is here put toward a cherished object, one that acts toward unity rather than division.
Beroana, atau wang cengkerang ialah sejenis matawang diperbuat daripada porselin dan barangan tembikar. Di Kepulauan Pasifik, tempat Taloi Havini dilahirkan, beroana bukan sekadar sistem bayaran. Ia adalah sebahagian penting upacara keramaian termasuklah perkahwinan, pengebumian dan perdamaian keluarga, dan apabila tidak digunakan, disimpan di dalam bekas suci di tempat persembunyian rahsia. Lingkaran beroana yang berpusar dan mengapung, dari rona krim ke terracota, mengungkapkan keindahan pertukaran melepasi batas pemaksaan. Pengeluaran hasil semulajadi disini digubah menjadi barangan berharga, menjurus kepada penyatuan dan bukan pemisahan.
Taloi Havini
(b. 1981, b. Autonomous Region of
Bougainville, based in Australia)
Beroana (Shell Money) I
2015
Earthenware, clear glaze, steel wire
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Beroana, or shell money, is a form of currency made from porcelain, stoneware and earthenware. In the Pacific Islands where Taloi Havini was born, beroana is more than just a system of payment. It is an integral part of ceremonies, including weddings, funerals and family reconciliations, and when not in use, is stored in sacred vessels in high secret keeping places. The whirling, freely suspended spiral of beroana, in earthy tones of cream to terracotta, speak a poetics of exchange beyond coercion. The extraction of natural resources is here put toward a cherished object, one that acts toward unity rather than division.
Beroana, atau wang cengkerang ialah sejenis matawang diperbuat daripada porselin dan barangan tembikar. Di Kepulauan Pasifik, tempat Taloi Havini dilahirkan, beroana bukan sekadar sistem bayaran. Ia adalah sebahagian penting upacara keramaian termasuklah perkahwinan, pengebumian dan perdamaian keluarga, dan apabila tidak digunakan, disimpan di dalam bekas suci di tempat persembunyian rahsia. Lingkaran beroana yang berpusar dan mengapung, dari rona krim ke terracota, mengungkapkan keindahan pertukaran melepasi batas pemaksaan. Pengeluaran hasil semulajadi disini digubah menjadi barangan berharga, menjurus kepada penyatuan dan bukan pemisahan.
Taloi Havini
(b. 1981, b. Autonomous Region of
Bougainville, based in Australia)
Beroana (Shell Money) I
2015
Earthenware, clear glaze, steel wire
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection
Beroana, or shell money, is a form of currency made from porcelain, stoneware and earthenware. In the Pacific Islands where Taloi Havini was born, beroana is more than just a system of payment. It is an integral part of ceremonies, including weddings, funerals and family reconciliations, and when not in use, is stored in sacred vessels in high secret keeping places. The whirling, freely suspended spiral of beroana, in earthy tones of cream to terracotta, speak a poetics of exchange beyond coercion. The extraction of natural resources is here put toward a cherished object, one that acts toward unity rather than division.
Beroana, atau wang cengkerang ialah sejenis matawang diperbuat daripada porselin dan barangan tembikar. Di Kepulauan Pasifik, tempat Taloi Havini dilahirkan, beroana bukan sekadar sistem bayaran. Ia adalah sebahagian penting upacara keramaian termasuklah perkahwinan, pengebumian dan perdamaian keluarga, dan apabila tidak digunakan, disimpan di dalam bekas suci di tempat persembunyian rahsia. Lingkaran beroana yang berpusar dan mengapung, dari rona krim ke terracota, mengungkapkan keindahan pertukaran melepasi batas pemaksaan. Pengeluaran hasil semulajadi disini digubah menjadi barangan berharga, menjurus kepada penyatuan dan bukan pemisahan.
Tay Mo-Leong
(b. 1938, Malaysia)
Rubber Trees
1960
Batik
80 cm × 65 cm
Courtesy ILHAM collection
In Rubber Trees, Tay Mo-Leong uses batik crackle, achieved by cracking dried wax and allowing dye to seep into its crevices, as an image-making device. Selected segments of the crackle are filled in to represent the trunks, fruits and crowns of trees, instrumentalising the abstract batik crackle toward figurative ends. The rest of the picture plane is left bare, with scale and distance suggested by two figures harvesting and transporting latex.
Tay Mo-Leong was among a generation of Malaysian artists who used batik as a medium to create paintings, moving away from European notions of the hierarchy between art and craft. Rather, batik painting was a way to combine traditional techniques with modernist formalism.
Lewat Rubber Trees, Tay Mo-Leong menggunakan retakan batik sebagai teknik pembuatan imej. Ini dihasilkan dengan meretakan lilin kering dan membiarkan pewarna meresap ke celah-celahannya. Sebahagian daripada retakan itu diisi untuk menggambarkan batang pokok, buah-buahan serta silara, memperalatkan teknik retak batik ke arah tujuan kiasan. Selebihnya gambar dibiarkan kosong, dengan skala dan jarak diukur oleh dua figura yang menuai dan mengangkut susu getah.
Tay Mo-Leong ialah sebahagian generasi artis-artis Malaysia yang menggunakan batik sebagai medium untuk mencipta lukisan dengan mengenepikan tanggapan Eropah akan hierarki antara seni dan kraf. Sebaliknya, lukisan batik adalah cara untuk menyatukan teknik tradisional dengan bentuk-bentuk zahir moden.
Yong Mun Sen
(b. 1896 – d. 1962, Malaysia)
The Women
c. 1950s
Oil on board
43 cm × 53 cm
Courtesy ILHAM collection
Born to, raised in, and inspired by a plantation, it is no surprise that nature and production were core themes in Yong Mun Sen’s work. In The Women, the figures and background alike are bathed in the gold of a bountiful harvest. Two muscular women with chiselled jaws and broad chests haul bundles of harvested paddy. One of them looks older than the other: perhaps they are mother and daughter, reflecting the fertility of land in the fertility of its people.
Far from confined to performing domestic chores in the house, women played an important role in economic life in early 20th century Malaya. In rice-growing Malay villages, men would perform the hard labour of ploughing the land, but women were in charge of harvesting and transporting rice. Women also often held the purse strings to the household and engaged in cottage industries, such as mat-weaving, or petty trading in fish and vegetables to earn more cash for their families.
Bukanlah satu kejutan apabila alam semulajadi dan penghasilan menjadi tema utama karyanya kerana Yong Mun Sen lahir, dibesarkan serta diilhamkan di dan oleh ladang. Lewat The Women, langit dan ladang disirami tuaian padi luar biasa. Dua wanita kekar dengan rahang tajam dan dada tegap sedang menuai padi. Salah satunya kelihatan lebih tua: mungkin mereka pasangan emak anak, melambangkan kesuburan tanah dan kesuburan orang-orangnya.
Awal abad ke-20 Malaya, wanita tidak hanya terkekang dengan kerja-kerja rumah, malah mereka punya peranan penting dalam kehidupan ekonomi. Di kampung-kampung Melayu yang bertanam padi, orang lelaki mengerjakan kudrat kuat membajak tanah, manakala wanita pula bertugas menuai dan mengangkut padi. Wanita juga yang selalunya mengawal perbelanjaan rumah dan terlibat dengan industri kampung seperti menganyam tikar atau berjual-beli ikan dan sayur secara kecil-kecilan untuk mencari wang lebih untuk keluarga.
Yong Mun Sen
(b. 1896 – d. 1962, Malaysia)
Young Palms
c. 1940s
Watercolour on paper
38 cm × 58.5 cm
Courtesy ILHAM collection
It is said that Yong Mun Sen, one of the earliest modern artists in Malaysia, was first inspired to become an artist when he saw a Japanese artist paint his family’s coconut and pepper plantation in Sarawak. Said Japanese artist was using watercolours and painting en plein air, that is painting outdoors and not in the studio, which henceforth became a medium and method that would remain a core part of Yong’s practice. Young Palms, a watercolour work picturing oil palms yet to reach maturity, was presumably made in this vein.
Dikhabarkan bahawa Yong Mun Sen, salah seorang seniman moden Malaysia mula terilham untuk menjadi artis apabila seorang artis Jepun melukis ladang kelapa dan lada milik keluarganya di Sarawak. Artis Jepun itu menggunakan cat air dan melukis secara en plein air, iaitu secara langsung dan bukan di studio, dan kemudiannya menjadi medium dan kaedah yang membentuk teras utama praktiknya. Young Palms, sebuah karya cat air menggambarkan kelapa sawit yang belum matang berkemungkinan dihasilkan menerusi kaedah ini.
Mapping Relations
Plantations both produce capital and are produced by a global system of finance capital. The commodity market, wherein agricultural products are traded between financial actors, determines the price of plantation products and, therefore, the livelihoods of workers. As financial products such as futures and options proliferate, they become increasingly distant from the tangible reality of their underlying goods and their modes of production. To quote writer Hernan Diaz: “If money is a fiction, finance capital is a fiction of a fiction. That’s what [they] trade in: fictions.”
The artworks in this section explore the tricky relationship between form and capital. Rather than be lulled by the neat and seemingly benign abstraction of market forces, these artworks map the myriad, contradictory structures and entanglements that exist between object and capital.
Sambil menghasilkan modal, per- ladangan juga dihasilkan oleh sistem modal kewangan global. Pasaran komoditi, di mana produk pertanian didagangkan antara pelaku kewangan, menentukan harga produk perladangan dan, dengan itu, mata pencarian pekerja. Apabila produk kewangan seperti niaga hadapan (futures) dan opsyen ber- kembang pesat, produk tersebut menjadi semakin jauh daripada realiti ketara barangan asas dan cara pengeluarannya. Seperti kata penulis Hernan Diaz: “Jika wang adalah fiksyen, modal kewangan adalah fiksyen kepada fiksyen. Itulah yang [mereka] perdagangkan: fiksyen.”
Karya seni dalam bahagian ini meneroka hubungan rumit antara bentuk dan modal. Daripada dibuai oleh abstraksi kuasa pasaran yang kemas dan kelihatan jinak, karya seni ini memetakan berbagai struktur dan keterkaitan bercanggah yang wujud antara objek dan modal.
New Political Subjects
The plantation is a machine geared for maximum production and profit. To keep costs low, plantations often relied on migrants who were ‘planted’ in foreign geographies and coerced into work. Many plantations were not financially viable without these low costs of labour: the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865 effectively ended plantations in the American South. In many parts of the world, violence is the underbelly of the plantation, especially under colonial rule.
The artists in this section reckon with the legacies of their families, ethnicities, and nation-states, charting a path through historical memory, oral storytelling, and spiritual inheritances. Plantations have deeply shaped these artists’ political subjectivity, that is, how they have come to understand themselves in relation to power structures and governance systems. Their stories push up against, and do not easily acquiesce to sanctioned narratives. The past is present in these works, disclosing otherwise unrecognised and untold stories of their experience.
Perladangan dilihat sebagai sebuah mesin untuk pengeluaran dan keuntungan yang maksimum. Untuk memastikan kos rendah, perladangan sering bergantung kepada pendatang yang ‘ditanam’ di alam asing dan dipaksa bekerja. Kebanyakan ladang tidak berdaya dari segi kewangan tanpa kos buruh yang rendah ini: pemansuhan perhambaan di Amerika Syarikat pada tahun 1865 menamatkan perladangan di selatan negara tersebut. Di merata dunia, keganasan amat jelas dalam perladangan, terutamanya di bawah pemerintahan penjajah.
Para artis dalam bahagian ini mengambil kira warisan keluarga, kaum dan negara bangsa mereka, melakarkan laluan melalui ingatan sejarah, cerita lisan dan warisan rohani. Perladangan telah membentuk subjektiviti politik artis ini secara mendalam, yakni bagaimana mereka memahami diri mereka sendiri relatif kepada struktur kuasa dan sistem tadbir urus. Kisah mereka bertentangan dengan, dan tidak mudah bersetuju dengan naratif rasmi. Masa lampau wujud dalam karya ini, mendedahkan realiti pengalaman mereka yang sebelum ini tidak diiktiraf atau diceritakan.
Productive Landscapes
In the mid-20th century, artists in the Malayan peninsula looked to convey their own realities through the genre of landscape painting. They responded to multiple traditions and concerns: the 18th century Western aesthetic ideal of the picturesque, where paintings had to balance between being ‘beautiful’ and ‘sublime’; the influence of Chinese ink painting; and above all, the condition of modernity, that of newness and transformation. British rule, once seen as eternal, was coming to an end in Malaya, and it left an indelible mark on artists now concerned with giving a voice to this emerging nation.
The idyllic, fertile, tamed plantation was an aesthetic category borne out of economic power. Malayan land resources were hugely profitable for the British Empire: immediately post-World War II, Britain’s post-war economic recovery and debt payments to the United States were funded by Malayan tin and rubber. This art of the plantation makes visible the relationship between nature and production. Art, too, becomes a form of production.
Pertengahan abad ke-20 melihat para artis semenanjung Tanah Melayu meninjau realiti mereka melalui genre lukisan landskap. Mereka menoleh kepada pelbagai tradisi dan pendekatan: kesempurnaan estetika Barat abad ke-18 yang indah, di mana lukisan perlu mengimbangi antara ‘cantik’ dengan ‘luhur’; pengaruh lukisan dakwat Cina; dan terutama sekali, keadaan kemodenan, yakni kebaharuan dan transformasi. Pemerintahan British, yang pada suatu ketika dianggap abadi, sedang menyurut di Tanah Melayu, dan meninggalkan kesan yang sukar dipadam di hati para artis yang kini berimpian memberi suara kepada sebuah negara baharu.
Ladang yang indah, subur lagi jinak merupakan kategori estetik yang muncul daripada kuasa ekonomi. Sumber alam Tanah Melayu amat menguntungkan Empayar British: sejurus selepas Perang Dunia II, pemulihan ekonomi Britain pasca perang dan pembayaran hutang kepada Amerika Syarikat dibiayai oleh bijih timah dan getah Malaya. Seni perladangan ini mendedahkan hubungan antara alam semula jadi dan pengeluaran. Seni juga menjadi satu bentuk pengeluaran.
Uncanny Fruit
As commodities, plantation products are interchangeable; one tonne of palm oil is substitutable with another tonne of palm oil, regardless of the geographic origin and producer of either. The products, or fruits, of a plantation are thus engineered for sameness, to be replaceable, replicable, and as similar to each other as possible. The same trees, and the same fruit, are growing across Malaysia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Colombia. Continents away, the plantation looks exactly the same. It is a phenomenon that is strangely familiar, yet unsettling and uneasy: it is uncanny.
The works in this section explore the feeling of the uncanny, contrasting the individual and the mass, the synthetic and the organic, the strange and the familiar. One might think of these works as the doppelgangers of monoculture, revealing in its eerie, haunting presence.
Sebagai komoditi, hasil perladangan boleh ditukar ganti; satu tan minyak sawit boleh diganti dengan satu tan minyak sawit yang lain, tanpa mengira tempat asal dan pengeluarnya. Hasil, atau buahan daripada sebuah ladang adalah sama, boleh diganti, boleh ditiru, dan sama antara satu dan yang lain. Pokok dan buahan yang sama tumbuh di Malaysia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Colombia. Di benua yang lain, ladang kelihatan betul-betul sama sahaja. Ianya fenomena yang meresahkan, tidak selesa, aneh tapi biasa: pelik.
Karya-karya dalam bahagian ini meneroka perasaan pelik ini, membezakan individu dan orang ramai, yang sintetik dan yang organik, yang pelik dan yang biasa. Karya-karya ini boleh dilihat sebagai doppelganger kepada pertanian monokultur yang membawa pelbagai pendedahan melalui sifat seramnya.