AOTM: Youth Embarbed by Patrick Ng Kah Onn

Patrick Ng Kah Onn provocatively composes two male nudes as his subject in this artwork with what looks like a sunset background. The figure in the foreground stares almost authoritatively (with both hands on his hips) at the audience while the second stares right into the distance. Ng places these slightly muscular, yet lean figures close to one another in this tight composition. 

One may interpret Youth Embarbed as a study of male anatomy. However, the barbed wire that is disturbingly and painfully entangled between both these figures should be given careful consideration. The barbed wire is tied to the knee of the male figure in the foreground and leads to the upper body of the male figure in the background—also tangling at the first figure’s arm and back to the second figure in the background. Such excruciating ‘entanglement’ and ‘bond’ between these two nude figures cannot be disregarded.

Can this work be read as the depiction of a pair of gay men by Patrick Ng? The gestures, postures, facial expressions, positionings, and the bond illustrated by the barbed wire can be read as subtle indicators or signs in understanding the work. Given the consideration that Malaysia is a conservative and Islamic country, the ‘coming-out’ process for a gay or lesbian—or any other sexual orientations or gender identities—is never easy or acceptable in the societal context, what more in the 1960s when this artwork was produced. Perhaps it is this issue that Ng intends to highlight in this particular work. 

Patrick Ng, born in 1932 in Kuala Lumpur, was among the early generation of Malaysian artists who went to pursue his art education in the United Kingdom and stayed on there till his demise in 1989.