A jaunt down memory lane before we close the chapter on 2023, making some quick stops at some art highlights that you may have missed.
By Ellen Lee
Happy December! Before the year leaves our clutches altogether, allow us to take some fleeting impressions of what was in this year of Malaysian art and get it all down in the books.
Speaking of books… This year was filled with art book launches, seemingly more so than in previous years. Here we list some of them, including links where you can still get copies, on top of our usual round-up of notable art exhibitions and events. Many arts festivals returned bigger and better this year too, with a few up-and-comers tagging along and a couple of long-standing cultural organisations celebrating anniversaries.
Art Books: Compiling Histories & Practices
A publishing bug took hold in 2023, with many books being launched this year that contribute to the ongoing story of Malaysian art history. These include artist monographs, collector memoirs, and coffee table-style reviews of artist practices.
Midway through the year, Malaysia’s foremost contemporary artist Yee I-Lann made a grand return to Kuala Lumpur with her Borneo Heart tour and the launch of her monograph, the sun will rise in the east. Her first and only other artist monograph was 2010’s Fluid World, published by the now-closed Valentine Willie Fine Art, which compiled the photomedia-based works that she was known for during the early half of her career. the sun will rise in the east, edited and published by RogueArt consultancy, surveys the series of Borneo Heart projects and tikar-based works that Yee has been creating with communities of weavers in Borneo since her return to her native Sabah in 2017. Taken together, Fluid World and the sun will rise in the east are the twin monoliths marking Yee’s expansive career.
Another Sabahan launched her book as well—Red Hong Yi’s How to Paint Without A Brush: The Art of Red Hong Yi is also edited by RogueArt, and published by Abrams Books. The book launch in April was accompanied by supplementary artist signings and talks; the book itself featured anecdotes from Red about her practice and some exercises at the end for making art using non-traditional mediums. Later in the year, Red and her studio also launched a new collaboration with Uniqlo at the brand’s revamped Bukit Bintang store, releasing a line of Red-themed merchandise.
Yet again in Sabah, the much-beloved printmaking and DIY collective Pangrok Sulap launched their 10-year anniversary book, titled Pangrok Sulap: Sedekad Seni Merakyat (A Decade of People’s Art), which charts 10 years of their practice and operations as an art collective, with beginnings in the punk community of Ranau, a town in rural Sabah. Congratulations to Pangrok Sulap—who have also been selected to participate in the 2023 Thailand Biennale, happening now in Chiang Rai.
Jalaini Abu Hassan (a.k.a. “Jai”), one of Malaysia’s most established and prolific contemporary painters, released two books this year: Sidang Sepetang, collecting anecdotes and musings from the artist’s life, and Cosmic Connections Langkawi, a coffee table book featuring astronomical photographs taken from the Langkawi National Observatory, authored by astrophysicist Dr. Mazlan Othman and interspersed with celestial-inspired sketches from Jai.
CULT Gallery, a commercial gallery located on the ground floor of a private bungalow in Bukit Tunku, Kuala Lumpur, was busy this year with hosting not one, not two, but three book launches: firstly, that of Nik M. Fahmee’s art-collection memoirs, Butterflies In My Stomach (the launch was accompanied by a poignant exhibition in which Nik invited collector peers to contribute one piece of art from their collection and a personal anecdote relating to the work); secondly, their self-published GoBlock: SENIBUKU which features ten Malaysian artists exploring the intersections of artist book-making and printmaking; and Anna Salleh’s memoirs of her poet father, Salleh Ben Joned — Truth, Beauty, Amok and Belonging. G13 Gallery, also a commercial gallery, launched The Artist’s Studio: Exploring the Workspace of 17 Malaysian Artists, a major illustration-filled book that marks the first contemporary survey of artist studios in Malaysia since Emelia Ong’s 2019 Living Art.
And of course, what are books without their readers? To sift through all this material we need a discerning eye—a reader to process and make sense of everything for the sake of posterity and history. To this end, RogueArt and A+ Works of Art launched their Library Residency, the first of its kind in recent memory in Malaysia, wherein selected researchers are granted access to the library of art history books and resources, lovingly curated by RogueArt over years in the business, at the Sentul-based gallery’s front room.
Exhibitions: Bringing Familiar, Forgotten Names to the Spotlight
It was a big “Finally” moment for a number of senior artists this year who finally had solo exhibitions in either their home state, the state where they first launched their career, or for the first time in a long time. For starters, currently ongoing now at Blank Canvas gallery in Penang is Ernest Zacharevic’s solo exhibition, The Importance of Being, the artist’s first on Penang soil since 2014—surprising, considering how much his street art has contributed to putting George Town on the map for art and heritage tourism. Earlier this year, we also saw Yee I-Lann bringing her blockbuster exhibition-project, Borneo Heart (first exhibited in Kota Kinabalu in 2021), to Kuala Lumpur, the city where she first began her art career in the 90s and 00s. Borneo Heart was a takeover of five venues in Kuala Lumpur, with exhibitions, workshops, and a market of artisans flown in from Borneo. Splitting her post-return-to-Sabah practice into three parts, she showed her TIKAR/MEJA series at The Back Room, her photo media essays at A+ Works of Art, and her larger-scale tikar works and videos at ILHAM Gallery. It all culminated in the launch of her above-mentioned monograph in July.
Also in July, ILHAM Gallery opened Nirmala Dutt: STATEMENTS to many exhales of “Finally!” A woman artist operating in the same time as the beginnings of the post-modernist era in Malaysian art and alongside peers such as Redza Piyadasa, Sulaiman Esa, and Ismail Zain, Statements was nevertheless the first retrospective of her oeuvre, which spans socially conscious art and innovative techniques combining photography, silkscreen, and painting. Over at the National Art Gallery of Malaysia, a survey of the archives of the 84-year-old veteran photographer and photo-journalist Eric Peris collects hundreds of his photographs, spanning over 50 years of his practice, and runs until May 2024.
Aside from Zacharevic’s solo, other notable exhibitions in Penang this year include Thomas Powell’s solo Pretty Ugly at Hin Bus Depot, Leaving Traces group exhibition of contemporary drawings, curated by Ivan Gabriel, at Hin Bus Depot, and All Day I Dream About Chairs and It May Contain Traces of Art by Dhavinder Singh (who lately moved to Penang from Kuala Lumpur) at Hin Bus Depot and the Mano Plus store, respectively. It was a busy year for landscape architect Tan Wei Ming—ordinarily known for his work under his studio, Sputnik Forest, and for founding Lunabar Coffee—who momentarily hung up his landscaper’s hat to present himself as an artist with Be Water My Friend, an art experiment at Hin Bus Depot, and Men With Plants, a duo show at ChinaHouse with elusive botanist and stained glass painter Fuan Wong.
Balai Bulletin: National Art Gallery Experiments With Diversification
Emerging out of a long slumber of renovations and repairs, Balai reopened their galleries in 2022 with NUSA, a new curation of their institutional collection that takes up all floors of their Titiwangsa location and will run as such until 2025. Their front hall has seen more diverse programming, continuing their ongoing “Ruangan Hanya Satu” venture which invites young artists to take over their front hall with a large-scale installation, perhaps inspired by the concept of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. This year, the space featured a ’gram-worthy neon installation with acrylic structures by Nawwar Shukriah Ali, a.k.a. Bono Stellar, and a multi-panel LED digital installation by Abdul Shakir.
It seems the long hiatus has allowed them more time to diversify their outreach tactics and, while their galleries have been largely dormant with the same exhibition, the team appears to have been busy with programming up and down the nation. Such programmes include the launch of Azzaha Ibrahim’s project, After Monsoon, in Tumpat, Kelantan, during the monsoon season in October. The National Art Gallery’s bi-annual competition Bakat Muda Sezaman took place again this year, continuing the pandemic-era tradition of artists finding their own host locations and thus encouraging for works to be shown all around the country. (Whether this is a worthwhile way of showing emerging talents and giving their careers a push remains to be seen.) A Zine × DIY festival hosted on the grounds around the gallery in September offered a youthful new platform for local creatives.
Art Fairs & Festivals: Bigger, Better, and Some Birthdays
The usual programme of art fairs and festivals took place this year, including CIMB Artober in a vastly more expensive edition at the MATRADE Centre; 1000 Tiny Artworks in its second edition at The Back Room, KL, where nearly 700 tiny works of art were sold over a single weekend; the PNB 118- and ThinkCity-sponsored PESZTA, also in its second and expanded edition across seven venues in Kampung Attap, KL; and Hin Market’s Hin On The Move touring market programme that made pit stops in KL (The Zhongshan Building), Bukit Mertajam (The Barn), Johor (Parit Bunga), Melaka (Bangunan Melaka), and even Chiang Mai, Thailand (Baan Kang Wat). PUSAKA, one of the nation’s longest-running cultural and heritage institutions, celebrated their 21st anniversary this year by organising Panggung PUSAKA: Senandung Kota at The Godown, KL in early October, a festival which featured a stunning line-up of endangered cultural performances like Kuda Kepang, Main Puteri, and Dondang Sayang.
Thus we bid farewell to a long and fruitful year for Malaysian art and culture, one that was full of many ups and few downs. May the year ahead be as productive to all, and as conducive to new discoveries of forgotten or hidden gems. And if you haven’t done your Christmas shopping yet, scroll back up to the list of art books published this year to spark some ideas.
Cover photo: Installation view of Men With Plants, a duo show by Tan Wei Ming and Fuan Wong at ChinaHouse, Penang. Photo by Tan Wei Ming.
Ellen Lee is a writer based in Kuala Lumpur. She assists with operations at The Back Room gallery while pursuing writing on a freelance basis.