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Malaysian and Singaporean Arts and Literature magazine
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dusunJune/July 2011
Ridiculously Free
all girl’s issue
Malaysian e-Journal of the Arts
georgette chensand Tyee i-lannizan tahirshia yih yiingsarah joan mokhtarin this issue
siti zainon ismail
chuah guat eng
Thank you....
.... for taking a look at Malaysia’s newest Arts e-zine – Dusun (which incidentally means orchard in Malay). It is a nurturing
place where the Arts blossom and fruit.
Dusun is free, absolutely free. It will not cost you – the reader anything to read Dusun. The only charges will be those you might naturally imcur through your service provider for
downloading.
Dusun has been created to cover the Arts from painting to poetry and, over time, will bring new insights into the Arts
created in Malaysia and by Malaysians wherever they may be living.
Dusun will bring you some insights into the history of Malaysian Arts as well as current happenings, and is dedicated to
enhancing your visual experience.
This is an exciting age in which we live. That is why we – the team at Dusun, have chosen to launch in e-media rather than in the traditional way. It also has the knock-on effect of saving
trees and reducing our carbon footprint on the planet.
As Dusun progresses the e-magazine will be available in more places and in more e-formats suitable for downloading onto mobile phones, laptop computers and, of course, e-tablets and
e-readers.
Come, the ride begins here.........
georgette chen 1906 - 1993
dusun
cont
ents
June/July 2011
page 6 editorial
page 9 georgette chen founder painterpage 14 sand T minimalist artistpage 22 yee i-lann fluid worldpage 29 siti zainon ismail poetrypage 34 shia yih yiing vessels of artpage 37 chuah guat eng the bride from ceylonpage 40 izan tahir mapping the unconsciouspage 46 sarah joan mokhtar rojakpage 50 next issue
cover sarah joan mokhtar
editor yusuf martin
email [email protected]
Dusun TM
editorialThe time is ripe.
After long days and even longer nights Dusun - Malaysia’s first free dig-ital arts and culture e-magazine, blossoms and bears fruit.
Dusun is a brand new venture. Its aim is to bring the very best of Malay-sian creativity to the digital world., and in the coming months and years aims to cover the fine arts, graphic arts, photography, film, literature, poetry and other forms of creativity.
To this end Dusun is made available in Pdf format and on Issuu as a flick-able flash file, and is free to the end user.
This is the seminal issue of Dusun....it is dedicated to the creative women of Malaysia.
Women in Malaysian arts and culture have not featured prominently. This first issue of Dusun hopes to redress the balance by featuring works by some of the most influential female creatives - such as Georgette Chan, who influenced painting in Penang and then Singapore in the 1950s.
More recently - SandT, Malaysian and born in Malacca, has had great success as a minimalist artist around the world, but especially in the USA, while Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann, brought up in Sabah, was art educated in Australia and the UK.
Shia Yih Ying hails from Malaysian Sarawak, and Izan Tahir was born in Malaysia but has spent many years in the UK, while Malaysian cartoonist - Sarah Joan Mokhtar describes herself as ‘rojak’ (mixed) and began her career in graphic arts, Malaysia, aged 14.
Malaysian poet Siti Zainon Ismail normally writes in Malay, but for this issue of Dusun has given us the opportunity to read some of her work in English, while Malaysia’s most remarkable female novelist (in English) - Chua Guat Eng allows us to read The Bride from Ceylon – a short story.
This is an exciting issue, but it is only a start.....Dusun will be back every two months with more exciting Malaysian creativity, bringing Malaysian talent and imagination to the world.
Ed.
georgette chen
self portrait 1946
Georgette Chen was born Chang Li Ying in China (1906) and was a forebear of visual arts in Singapore, contributing to the birth of the Nanyang style of art. Georgette studied art in the Art Students League of New York in 1926 and in 1927 studied at the Académie Colarossi and Académie Biloul. Paris. During the 1940s Georgette lived in Shanghai,
China.
In 1951 she moved to Penang and then in 1953 to Singapore. She exhibited her work at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce (1953) and
the Singapore Art Society (1954).
She was awarded the Singapore Cultural Medallion in 1982 and died March 15, 1993
singapore waterfront 1958
east coast vendor 1961
still life moon festival 1965 - 1968
unknown malay woman
sand
T
forest of light (chartreuse)
voice of silence
time and space
Sand T was born in historical Melaka, land of Nonya/Baba, cincalok and gula. This extremely prolific artist, whose work is also in the Malaysian National Art Gallery collection, drifted towards the US of A for her Master of Fine Arts degree - and stayed on, in Massachusetts. There she has developed her stunning visual style and makes a point in promoting better understanding of fine art through her minimalist works.
For those more familiar with the figurative art of Zakaria Ali, Rafiee Ghani, or indeed the more abstract works of Latiff Mohidin and Ibrahim Hussein, Sand T’s take on minimalist art refreshes the senses that other arts cannot reach.
Michael Fried, in Artforum 1967, suggested that the concept of minimalist art, or liberalist art as he prefers, is an entirely ideological enterprise. To a large extent minimalist art separates itself off from mod-ernist art, and more especially from the contemporary arts of the time – Op Art and Pop Art. Released from the boundaries of painting, minimalist art becomes freed from the need for pictorial illusion and, to a large extent, representation and ‘flat’ art altogether, in favour of an art utilising three dimensions.
Minimalism, in its stillness, transcends the mere mimetic, stripping away the irrelevant, revealing the fundamental and it is these very qualities which are inherent in Sand T’s works, and may go some way into describing the otherwise indescribable qualities of her transcendental, seemingly tranquil, art.
Sand T specialises in art made using epoxy resin, usually on a clayboard, with additional colour, and occasionally the use of graphite too. Her works are highly reflective, making use of internal colour and space as well as reflections and shadows cast onto her works.
There is a sublimely sumptuous quality about Sand T’s epoxy resin works which, though termed by the artist ‘minimalist’, actually defy categorisation. At moments when visitors wax lyrical, these highly polished and reflective epoxy resin works, often graced with graphite, appear to have freeze-framed 1970s lava lamps (as seen at the Massachusetts exhibition Negotiating the Irrationalities hosted by artSPACE@16). At other times the viewer might be encouraged to imagine that the tiny globules of semi-opaque fluid, are, seemingly, suspended, transfixed in time and space (Black Ecstasy B-2).
The self-delusionary viewer, who may or may not be a budding art historian high on the uniqueness of Sand T’s art, may imagine water drop-lets on the Pop Artist Allen Jones’ black patent leather boots (Voice of Silence), or perhaps the steamed windows of Dali’s surreal Rainy Taxi (Dancing Lights (clear)) as seemingly represented by Sand T’s radiant epoxy works; for there is little doubt that her works lend themselves to such reveries.
Old hippies may recall the 1960s band – Traffic, singing ‘...capturing moments of life in a jar’ from the song ‘Heaven Is In Your Mind’ (album Mr Fantasy-1967). From one perspective that is exactly what Sand T ap-pears to do with her works. Observing globules of epoxy resin seemingly suspended within the works lends a notion of time transfixed, or caught. This notion might be encouraged by the resonance of the spectacular Time and Space B-1 (in the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur), where carefully placed semi-translucent epoxy drips and lines, against a backdrop of deep reflective black, may give the viewer the illusion of a transcendental, Zen-space.
A mind oft used to indulgent fantasies might imagine strains of Miles Davis’ cool jazz, John Cage’s Dream (1948) or Phillip Glass’s Opening (from Glassworks 1981) frozen at a potentially mind-blowing ecstatic moment, solidified music, entrapped in epoxy resin, forever blowing, notes gelling into reality, reincarnated into resin. In German philosophy, Martin Heidegger reveals the concept of the Augenblick, a specific minimal moment in time – quite literal-ly the blink, or glance of an eye, time frozen, reduced to its smallest component part. And in many ways Augenblick may be enough to describe Sand T’s work, where drops of epoxy resin, on clay covered board, come to represent, in the eye of the beholder, infinite time and space encapsulated.
Whatever the viewer projects onto, or into, Sand T’s works, there is certainly little doubt that those works, whatever they may appear to be, are a trigger to meditation, or prayer, if ever there was one. For the viewer, observing Sand T’s work becomes inundated, washed with spiritual, Zen-like vibes; this is one of the most vital, intrinsic values of these alluring works - their innate ability to seemingly encourage contemplation and introspection.
Sand T’s frozen Zen drops are painstakingly placed for maximum effect, despite minimalist content, delivering surfaces which at once reflect an external world of physicality, while revealing a transcendental space for meditation, inner reflection and projection. Her intricately constructed resin works literally mirror external shifting reality while, simultaneously, capturing moments forever in stasis, sitting somewhere between realism and abstract, reality and construct.While Sand T’s works have the appearance of trapping the moment, catching the Augenblick that notion is, in reality, a sheer fallacy, for movement and time continues reflected on the surface of her works in a gleam of her highly polished epoxy resin. The works’ surfaces, with their mirror-esque qualities, bring exciting new dynamics into an already complex artistic equation.
It is true that Sand T’s artworks may appear as stasis, time encapsulated, but that is all it is - a Platonic appearance, not reality. Where romantic artistic interpreters dream of flies in amber and imagine raindrops on tropical leaves (Euclidean Space in Electric Lime), sheen on black metal (Voice of Silence), condensation in taxis (Minus Space) reality is, in fact, reflected on the works’ surfaces.
Like froth on a daydream, life is being lived external to the epoxy resin works themselves - reflections of cameras, lights, visitors, and in the darkened gallery – shadows, all dance to the tune of light reflected on the surface of Sand T’s works. For that, essentially, fundamentally is the delicious tension of Sand T’s constructs – the projected into and the reflected onto. Ultimately her artistic constructs are non-representational, in so much as they are things/goods/objects in themselves, and need exist only for themselves.
Euclidean Space in Slate Gray
k-1 orange
semi-simple aqua VI
yee i-lann
malaysia day commemorative plates
fluid word book cover
Yee I-Lann (born 1971, Sabah) strad-dles the South China Sea between her hometown in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo
Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur, West Malaysia as an artist and a production designer for feature films. I-Lann received her BA in Visual Arts from the University of South Australia, Adelaide in
1992 majoring in photography and cinematography. Incorporating various media including photography, film and installation, her practice seeks lattices between history, landscape, memory and cultural identity. Her visual vocabulary is extensive—drawn from historical references, popular culture, urban
landscapes, archives and everyday objects.
I-Lann has exhibited widely. She has taken part in the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery, Contemporary Commonwealth exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, ‘Independence Project’ and ‘Out of the Mould’ at Galeri Petronas, Kuala Lumpur, ‘Thermocline of Art:
New Asian Waves’ at ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Germany, ‘New Nature’ at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand and was invited to speak about her practice under the ‘Global Photography Now’
seminar at the Tate Modern, London.
huminodun
SITI ZAINON ISMAILSITI ZAINON ISMAIL
SITI ZAINON ISMAIL
Eclipse Over My City
The angsana gasps, “ I can’t breathe”
the bird pleads, “ be patient”
at least our budgies
can still play on your boughs
the palm whisper, “ you can see how dust- laden my leaves are”
where else do we dispose of
the sighs and the prayer of the winds?
O Sun, why are you hiding your wings of fire?
I can’t breathe, either
this dust is blinding my red – hot eyes
how will you shield yourself from my heat
when mountains and halls are broken and barren backed to dust
now see for yourself
desert of sand strewn all over the earth
little lakes riddle the parched wasteland
and barren rocks on mountain peaks pierce the sky
so now, sleep under this dusty blanket
but don’t ask me about my eclipse.
.....
Siti Zainon Ismail ( Malaysia , b 1949 - )
Translated by Zawiyah Yahya (Malaysia, b 1949-)
( Siti Zainon Ismail, The Rainbow, Galeri Melora 2000, p143)
Eclipse Over My City
The angsana gasps, “ I can’t breathe”
the bird pleads, “ be patient”
at least our budgies
can still play on your boughs
the palm whisper, “ you can see how dust- laden my leaves are”
where else do we dispose of
the sighs and the prayer of the winds?
O Sun, why are you hiding your wings of fire?
I can’t breathe, either
this dust is blinding my red – hot eyes
how will you shield yourself from my heat
when mountains and halls are broken and barren backed to dust
now see for yourself
desert of sand strewn all over the earth
little lakes riddle the parched wasteland
and barren rocks on mountain peaks pierce the sky
so now, sleep under this dusty blanket
but don’t ask me about my eclips.
.....
ReturningDon’t suffer this life
for the truth at the end of the tunnel
it would take countless trials
for you to decipher
His strange weave.
There the blurred vision of marsh lands
will grow darker and darker
rivers will return to their source
will birds will fly
out of their nests
in confusion
become stars
rising to the clouds.
Then will you understand the breathing of the exiled heart
that gathers the tears of grass flowers
that quietens the trembling pond
that gives birth,
like the seeds of blooming lilies
to charity and gratitude.
Don’t ask
where the rainbow has disappeared
end the cloud dreams....
Siti Zainon Ismail
October – November 1999
Translated by Harry Aveling (Australia, b 1942-)
Ibid, p 147
ReturningDon’t suffer this life
for the truth at the end of the tunnel
it would take countless trials
for you to decipher
His strange weave.
There the blurred vision of marsh lands
will grow darker and darker
rivers will return to their sourcse
will birds will fly
out of their nests
in confusion
become stars
rising to the clouds.
Then will you understand the breathing of the exiled heart
that gathers the tears of grass flowers
that quietens the trembling pond
that gives birth,
like the seeds of blooming lilies
to charity and gratitude.
Don’t ask
I always remember Saadi
visiting his rose garden
traversing the songs of the universe
Canterbury Rose Garden
I always remember Saadi
visiting his rose garden
traversing the songs of the universe
the valley flood with tears.
Here the garden is replete with followers
in the twilight of dust
inviting Miss Tanya!
rose of a million aromas
I entered deep into my dream first
like Saadi
careful in selecting the petal
unwilling to ruin the love
that is there.
Saadi whisprered again
do not drop the petals
my rose is endless love
the rain softens the painting of the garden
let it be there
the love of God
in fragrance genuine
of the garden.
Siti Zainon Ismail
Canterbury East, UK
July 1986
Translated by Prof Zakaria Ali (Malaysia, b 1944)
(Siti Zainon Ismail, The Rhythm of Night Song, ITNM 2009, p125)
Canterbury Rose Garden
I always remember Saadi
visiting his rose garden
traversing the songs of the universe
the valley flood with tears.
Here the garden is replete with followers
in the twilight of dust
inviting Miss Tanya!
rose of a million aromas
I entered deep into my dream first
like Saadi
careful in selecting the petal
unwilling to ruin the love
that is there.
Saadi whisprered again
do not drop the petals
my rose is endless love
the rain softens the painting of the garden
let it be there
the love of God
in fragrance genuine
of the garden.
Siti Zainon Ismail
Canterbury East, UK
July 1986
Translated by Prof Zakaria Ali (Malaysia, b 1944)
(Siti Zainon Ismail, The Rhythm of Night Song, ITNM 2009, p125)
I always remember Saadi
visiting his rose garden
traversing the songs of the universe
Siti Zainon Ismail is a poet, painter, academic and art critic who frequently represents Malaysia in poetry readings, painting exhibitions and seminars. Her Malay language poems and short stories are well known in Malaysia and have been translated into various languages including Bugarian , Hindi, English, Korean , Urdhu, Japanese, French , Thai and Russian.
SHIA
YIH
YIIN
GVESSELS OF ART
images courtesy of shalini ganendra fine art
vase of joy
Shia Yih Yiing was born in Kuching, Sarawak and obtained a diploma in fine art from the Malaysian
Institute of Art.
Shia has exhibited in group shows and individually. She took part in Asean Visual Art
Education Symposium & Workshop 1994, Mandalayong, Philippines and the
‘Commonwealth Fellowship in Arts & Crafts’, UWS Nepean, NSW Australia,1999, and had these solo exhibitions
1998 Homage to Ordinary Life, Creative
Center, KL
1999 Performer, Space YZ, UWS Nepean, NSW, Australia
2004 wOm(b), Galeri Petronas, KL
2006 Vessels of Art, Shalini Ganendra Fine Art, The Private Gallery, KL
2008 Motherhood Games, The Art Gallery, National Institute of Education, Singapore
relax
by Chuah Guat Eng
This picture I have of her. A young woman newly married and newly arrived from Ceylon, sitting at the back of her new house. The back of the house faces an abandoned coconut plantation, so no one sees her. She is sitting on the floor in the open doorway, leaning against the door post, legs tucked in a half lotus position. She is dressed in one of the new saris she has brought with her as part of her trousseau.
Is she crying? I don’t know. But I imagine that in her head is a confusion of questions.
Upstairs her husband sits at the marble-topped table with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a half-full glass in the other. As he has sat every evening since he brought her here, her new home in Malaya. On the floor is a torn up photo of Seroja, her younger sister. The beautiful Seroja, whom everyone knows will marry very, very well.
The Bride from CeylonThe Bride from Ceylon
The Bride from Ceylon
Chuah Guat Eng is a Malaysian writer born in Negeri Sembilan. She was Malaysia’s first English-language woman novelist and received her early education at the Methodist Girls’ School, Klang and Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur.
She read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, and German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich.
She received a PhD from National University of Malaysia in 2008 for her thesis “From Conflict to Insight: A Zen-based Reading Procedure for the Analysis of Fiction”.
She had found the photo that afternoon while putting away his freshly ironed shirts away in the dresser in their bedroom. How had it come to be there? Had he known Seroja before he came to her parents’ house in Kandy to finalize the marriage arrangements? His visit had been more for her benefit than for his. It was so that she could get to see him before she gave her consent. Her parents were more liberal than most. They had said to her: You may take a look at him. If you don’t like him, we shan’t proceed. But you must know that we think he will be a good husband and provider. He is well educated in English, has a B.A. from the University of London, and is a schoolteacher in a Government school in Malaya. Not only that, although he is in a position to demand a big dowry, he is prepared to forego it because he is modern in his thinking.
But has he seen me, she had asked. What if he doesn’t like me? She wanted but didn’t dare to add: What if he doesn’t like the way I look? My dark skin? My protruding teeth? The fact that I’m now twenty-two? That I never went to school and can’t speak, read or write English?
Her parents had assured her that he had already seen a photo of her, and had no objections to her looks. If he had, would he have agreed to the marriage without even asking for a dowry? For him it is enough that you can cook well and keep house for him and give him children. That is all he is asking for.
She had seen him through the lattice screen as he sat in the living room with her parents and the matchmaker that afternoon, and her heart had started to race. He was more than she could ever have hoped for. He looked like a young god, fair-skinned, tall, well built, lean. He had the noble air of a lion, with his keen eyes, high-bridged nose, broad sloping forehead, and thick wavy hair. For reasons of propriety, her parents had not allowed her to bring out the tea. Instead Seroja, as the younger daughter, was given the duty. She noticed how he had kept his head down when Seroja entered the room, and had blushed when she brought him his cup of tea. A man of twenty-five, and still so shy with women? Her heart went out to him.
She didn’t see him again until their wedding day.
She had been fearful of what would happen on the wedding night. But she need not have been. He did not touch her. Nor did he speak to her. On the ship, he left her alone every evening in the cabin they shared with four other people, coming back to his bunk in the early hours of the morning, stumbling slightly over the metal trunk on the floor. At the port and on the rail journey to their home, he only spoke to ask her if she was hungry or thirsty. He never looked at her. At times she thought he was angry with her. But she could think of no reason why he should be, and so she attributed his reticence to shyness.
It wasn’t until they had lived together under the same roof that she knew something was wrong. He spent every evening sitting at the marble table with his bottle and glass.
When she woke in the mornings she would find the space beside her empty and unslept in. She would get up and dutifully cook breakfast for him, lay out his clothes for work, and then wake him up where he had fallen asleep—at the marble table—with a gentle touch on the shoulder. He would rouse himself with a start, smelling of drink, eyes red-rimmed and unfocused; go to the bathroom, change in their bedroom, go down to the kitchen to eat. Then he was off and she would not see him again until lunchtime. He ate lunch alone in the dining room while she sat in the kitchen, wondering why he never thought of asking her to join him.
In the afternoons, he gave lessons at home. Then she saw a side of him that filled her with pride and sadness at the same time. He chatted. He made his students laugh. At times he yelled at them and even threw their books at them. On warm days, the lessons were conducted in the garden under the mango and cashew nut trees.
From the kitchen, she observed him. His energy, his vitality, his leonine maleness. The promise of a lively companion and a good father. But once the students were gone, he went straight to the cabinet where he kept his books and bottles. And it was back to the marble table until it was time for dinner, which, after the first week, she decided to serve him there.
A part of her knew this was not how marriage was meant to be. This was not the way her father behaved with her mother. But another part of her thought that perhaps it was all he wanted. Hadn’t her parents told her that he was content to have someone to cook for him and keep house for him? Maybe that was why he had not bothered with a dowry.
But hadn’t they also said that he wanted her to have his children?
The question so absorbs her that she forgets what has happened a few minutes ago. Her puzzlement at finding her sister’s photo, his anger when she asked him about it, her horror when he tore it up, and the desolation that drove her to the doorway at the back of the house where no one would see her.
She begins to make plans for the night, thinking about what she will wear, the perfumed oils she will use, the incense she will light, how to persuade him to sleep with her so that she can do what he wants and give him children.
There is no other way for her to think, because she cannot read. If she could, she would know that the name written in her father’s hand at the back of the photograph is not her sister’s, but her own.
Born in Malaysia, Izan lived mainly in theUK where she gained a BA (Art & Design) from the
London College of Printing in 1971.
She worked as a graphic designer in the UKand Malaysia - with Terence Conran at the ConranDesign Group, Robin Wade Design, Johan DesignAssociates, Leo Burnett and McCann Erickson.
Izan returned to Malaysia in 2004 and is now a fulltime artist with a studio in Kuala Lumpur. She is afounding member of the Alternative Printmakinggroup, Goblock. She also produces collaborative
work with Malaysian artist Marvin Chan under thename ‘im’.
‘My creativity crucially draws upon the mostordinary of our inherent abilities. Noticing andremembering. The understanding of language.
The recognition of analogies.Printmakers have what Michael Rothenstein
calls a kind of ‘conspiracy with their materials’and this, I believe, is true for all makers of art.’
izan tahir
in touch
that place
find a way
come my friends
sarah joan mokhtarAt the age of 15 Sarah Joan Mokhtar became Malaysia’s youngest published cartoonist and comic artist. She has since taken part in comic collaborations around the world, published illustrated books, comics and cartoons. In 2000 she won the The One Academy New Media Award Scholarship, 2001 Malaysian Red Crescent Society Selangor-Ishikawa Cultural Exchange, 2005 National Art Gallery Sonneratia II Youth Art Camp, 2006 Nokia Upstart Awards - Honorable Mention, 2006 Malaysian British Council “In Print “National Art Competition, First Runner-Up, 2007 Winner of Mdec Digital Comic Competition2007 Recipient of Malaysian Digital Comic Grant by MDec, 2010 1 Malaysia Contemporary Mural Painting Winner, 2010 Napoleon Hill International Convention Winner
Dusun cover illo by Sarah Joan Mokhtar
next issue August/SeptemberSURREALISM SPECIAL
