*CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE
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Circles Take The Square(s) : The Colonisation of Everyday Life As Spectacle
The Annexe Gallery Kuala Lumpur March 2013
The Annexe Gallery Kuala Lumpur March 2013
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KL 7th Triennial : BARRICADE
White Box, MAP@Publika Kuala Lumpur March 2013
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Drawing a Distance
House of Matahati Kuala Lumpur July 2012
House of Matahati Kuala Lumpur July 2012
Brave Old World: Raya Untuk Ravana | 2012 | Charcoal & acrylic ink on canvas | 156.5 x 117cm
Brave Old World: Langkapuri Yang Lain, Melarut Ufuk, Berpasak Alih
2012 | Shadow puppet (Hanuman) & charcoal on paper | 212 x 156.5cm
2012 | Shadow puppet (Hanuman) & charcoal on paper | 212 x 156.5cm
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The Body
My work is not figurative work. It's not simply a depiction of a human figure but a question about the relation of the body (self) in the contemporary setting. The representation of my own body in nude is try to show it in purity and the universality of being and at the same time showing the expression of experience and emotion of the individual. It is also to separate the artist from the self and enable the artist to look from outside and interrogate this relationship between the self (as the physical and metaphysical) and the contemporary values and ideology of the state and the world, nature and humanity.
My work is not figurative work. It's not simply a depiction of a human figure but a question about the relation of the body (self) in the contemporary setting. The representation of my own body in nude is try to show it in purity and the universality of being and at the same time showing the expression of experience and emotion of the individual. It is also to separate the artist from the self and enable the artist to look from outside and interrogate this relationship between the self (as the physical and metaphysical) and the contemporary values and ideology of the state and the world, nature and humanity.
Brave Old World
Brave Old World is a wordplay(?), taken from Aldous Huxley dystopia novel written in 1932 called ‘Brave New World’. It’s a futuristic novel but actually a reflection towards the contemporary condition of the Euro-America society at that moment, the industrial society and the mass production of products and material. The novel imagined how the society live in the future in the World State of global society, ‘the civilization’ who lived in the rigid and fixed structure to keep them ‘happy’ all the time. That world also divide the areas that is not suitable for easy living and consumption for group called ‘savage’. The specific title to my work; ‘Raya untuk Ravana’ and Langkapuri yang lain, Melarut Ufuk, Berpasak Alih’ is making reference to the old Malay Epic of ‘Hikayat Seri Rama’. The epic was based on the ancient sanskrit epic of Ramayana from India, which spread all over South Asia and being adapted by different parts of South East Asia- Cambodia, Thai, Laos, Malaya, Phillipines and Indonesia that have resulted in different version of the Epic. This epic was really influential in all over South East Asia and was represented in various media from storytelling, painting, sculpture, to dance and performance. One of the cultural performance that cross border all over South East Asia that carries the epic is wayang kulit (shadow puppet). The Malay version of the epic is called ‘Hikayat Seri Rama’. In Malaysia shadow puppet was popular in Kelantan, which is where I come from. But now, due to banning by the conservative Islamic government by more than 10 years and competition from other popular culture, it became less and less popular. Now what’s left with shadow puppet performance is not in the real form and setting but only in the very sanitized cultural show for tourist or urban audience in Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere. The particular shadow puppet (the Hanuman character) that I assembled in my work was part of my process to link and embrace the once deeply rooted cultural play I was lost in touch with. That Hanuman was before used by the most popular dalang (puppeteer) who already passed away, Pak Hamzah (Hamzah bin Awang Hamat) in the 80’s. Before I started to work on Langkapuri yang lain, Melarut Ufuk, Berpasak Alih, I already have the complete vision on how it’s going to look like as what the final work now are, and later it urged me to investigate the shadow puppet and I met one of the puppeteer who is now active in collecting and gathering information on shadow play and teaching new people who wants to learn the art of wayang kulit. Brave Old World is not looking back nor looking for the future but mediating in the present time of dislocation and destabilisation of life pattern. It seems there’s no connection between Aldous Huxley, 1932’s Brave New World and Wayang Kulit’s Hikayat Seri Rama but there’s a link in this ‘distance’.
Brave Old World is a wordplay(?), taken from Aldous Huxley dystopia novel written in 1932 called ‘Brave New World’. It’s a futuristic novel but actually a reflection towards the contemporary condition of the Euro-America society at that moment, the industrial society and the mass production of products and material. The novel imagined how the society live in the future in the World State of global society, ‘the civilization’ who lived in the rigid and fixed structure to keep them ‘happy’ all the time. That world also divide the areas that is not suitable for easy living and consumption for group called ‘savage’. The specific title to my work; ‘Raya untuk Ravana’ and Langkapuri yang lain, Melarut Ufuk, Berpasak Alih’ is making reference to the old Malay Epic of ‘Hikayat Seri Rama’. The epic was based on the ancient sanskrit epic of Ramayana from India, which spread all over South Asia and being adapted by different parts of South East Asia- Cambodia, Thai, Laos, Malaya, Phillipines and Indonesia that have resulted in different version of the Epic. This epic was really influential in all over South East Asia and was represented in various media from storytelling, painting, sculpture, to dance and performance. One of the cultural performance that cross border all over South East Asia that carries the epic is wayang kulit (shadow puppet). The Malay version of the epic is called ‘Hikayat Seri Rama’. In Malaysia shadow puppet was popular in Kelantan, which is where I come from. But now, due to banning by the conservative Islamic government by more than 10 years and competition from other popular culture, it became less and less popular. Now what’s left with shadow puppet performance is not in the real form and setting but only in the very sanitized cultural show for tourist or urban audience in Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere. The particular shadow puppet (the Hanuman character) that I assembled in my work was part of my process to link and embrace the once deeply rooted cultural play I was lost in touch with. That Hanuman was before used by the most popular dalang (puppeteer) who already passed away, Pak Hamzah (Hamzah bin Awang Hamat) in the 80’s. Before I started to work on Langkapuri yang lain, Melarut Ufuk, Berpasak Alih, I already have the complete vision on how it’s going to look like as what the final work now are, and later it urged me to investigate the shadow puppet and I met one of the puppeteer who is now active in collecting and gathering information on shadow play and teaching new people who wants to learn the art of wayang kulit. Brave Old World is not looking back nor looking for the future but mediating in the present time of dislocation and destabilisation of life pattern. It seems there’s no connection between Aldous Huxley, 1932’s Brave New World and Wayang Kulit’s Hikayat Seri Rama but there’s a link in this ‘distance’.
*Hanuman is the mighty ape who once was rejected by Seri Rama but then aided him in the expedition to save Rama’s wife from Ravana
* Langkapuri Yang Lain, Melarut Ufuk, Berpasak Alih is translated into (by my version): The Other Malaysia, the Freer One
* Ravana is the demon king of Langkapuri and the principal antagonist of Seri Rama
-poodien, July 2012
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The Lonely Crowd
September 2011
The Lonely Crowd #1
The Lonely Crowd #2
The Lonely Crowd #3
The Lonely Crowd #4
The Lonely Crowd #5
The Lonely Crowd #6
The Lonely Crowd #7
The Lonely Crowd #8
The Lonely Crowd #9
The Lonely Crowd #1 - 9 | 2011 | Watercolor on paper | 45.8 cm x 30.5 cm each
* workers on construction of the new 'state of the art' urban business infrastructure called Publika in Solaris Dutamas, KL
* mirror writing of the theses taken from the book 'The Society of The Spectacle' (French: La Société du spectacle), by Guy Debord, first published in 1967 in France.
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Ekspress Rakyat
Chan Hampe Galleries @ Raffles Hotel Singapore August 2011
Cape, Fences and the Others (not the real title) : Straight is Narrow number I | 2011 | Charcoal on paper | 30 cm x 150 cm
Cape, Fences and the Others (not the real title) : Straight is Narrow number II | 2011 | Charcoal on paper | 150 cm x 30 cm
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Merapi Eruption
House Of Matahati (HOM) Kuala Lumpur December 2010
Flattened Scape : Solitude | 2010 | Acrylic ink, chinese ink, acrylic and collage on paper | 40 x 102 cm
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End Game (MEA award winners showcase)
Galeri Chandan Kuala Lumpur November 2010
End Game : The Gate | Charcoal,silkscreen, acrylic & collage on canvas | 2010 | 39 x 105 cm
End Game : Beginning and Ending | 2010 | Charcoal & acrylic on canvas | 105 x 39 cm
End Game : Leaving Home | 2010| Charcoal, acrylic, silkscreen & collage on canvas | 145 x 216 cm
End Game : Partial of Logic | 2010 | Charcoal, silkscreen, acrylic & collage on canvas | 94 x 94 cm
End Game : Death Drive (Business As Usual) | 2010 | Charcoal, silkscreen, collage on canvas | 84 x 84 cm
End Game : Democratic Collision | 2010 | Charcoal, pastel, acrylic, collage & gesso on canvas | 156 x 117 cm
End Game : Victim of Circumstances | 2010 | Pastel & acrylic on Canvas | 145 x 216 cm
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Matters and Markings to End Game
By Rachel Jenagaratnam
Poodien’s End Game marks both a departure and a continuation from the very piece that landed the artist a prize at the Malaysia Emerging Artists Award in 2009, Larger Than Life: Downfighting. In that work, the artist depicted himself lying with his back to the viewer, the canvas was covered – almost like a thin curtain - by various symbols and iconic images, and this contrast was intentional, affording both striking visual contradictions, as well as the evocation of the polarity between man and his environment. In End Game, Poodien reuses this tool, juxtaposing realistic charcoal drawings with printed red hibiscuses and roses, symbols of our nation and life respectively. Beyond this visual annotation, however, is the term End Game itself. Appropriated from one of the issues of Adbusters (an anti-consumerist magazine founded in the late eighties), the artist saw beyond its original use within socioeconomic parameters to encapsulate any moment of change – big or small – that involves courage and risk. So, like another similar term - Zero Hour - End Game denotes change and a momentous halt to an era. And for Poodien, this certainly rings true with his latest body of work.
The seven works in this series are the byproduct of a turning point in the artist’s life. Before, he was deeply involved with the local DIY-independent-subculture, which boasted a community-centric spirit, interests in music and art, and utopian ideals, but these have been forsaken for an introverted existence and the reexamination of various topics. In the artist’s own words: “It's also a changing period of my focus from the collective good to the individual, where I spent more time in isolation, re strategizing the game.” Poodien’s latest works, therefore, carry the baggage of this process, evidencing a variety of inspirations, as well as the artist’s own disconcertion with his environment. Local politics, racism, group interests, and the role of the Internet in loosening the stranglehold of previous powers are topics that are buried deep in these canvases, but visual clues in the works hint especially at Poodien’s solitary journey. The landscapes in particular, from the sparse terrain in The Gate to the gossamer clouds in Partial of Logic. And, if the seven works in this series appear bleak at all, it is because the subject of death is also not far from the artist’s mind; “The main idea and drive behind this work lingers around the subject of ‘death’. Death as in physical death to conceptual death. Dialectically, to be aware of death, I need to be aware of being alive and what it means to be alive - the duality… To sum it up, life seems like a journey towards death and looking for truths is like learning how to die. To be fully aware of this is to really enable the consciousness on an individual level and to gain individual freedom.”
Portraying the self in these images remarks on the artist’s intense personal interrogation in this body of work. His use of the self as subject matter in his artworks mirror the performance art the artist sometimes dabbles in, where the artist’s body becomes the canvas and the demarcation between the personal and the public is blurred. Indeed, Poodien professes to a wide range of interests. He is piqued by moments in art history (Happenings and Surrealism); the writings found in Malaysiakini and Adbusters; Postmodernism; historian Farish A. Noor’s What Your Teacher Didn’t Tell You and Carl Jung’s The Man and His Symbols; and the writings of Slavoj Žižek, who, British broadsheet, The Telegraph, has dubbed ‘the world’s hippest philosopher’.
“It was really black and white back then,” says the artist of his past, “but life carries you to the more 'gray' side of things and life circumstances always bombard you with counterarguments to the things that you believe in.” Works in End Game reflect this pondering. Poodien explores life’s shades of gray or dialectical qualities, swinging to and fro arguments like a pendulum. In Death Drive (Business As Usual), for example, Poodien references Marcel Duchamp’s iconic urinal and examines the contradictions in Duchamp’s legacy; “Duchamp, the first to question the aesthetic of art or anti-aesthetic, was seen as the figure behind liberating the practice of making art itself. But, he was then reasserted into the new aesthetic.” Art’s vast history is also probed elsewhere. Hallmarks of Surrealism clearly tinge some works with distant echoes of Leonora Carrington’s haunting self-portraits and Salvador Dali’s surrealist landscapes - particularly the artist’s work The Meditative Rose - springing to mind. With a finger in every pie, so to speak, it’s interesting then that the works contain themselves within monochromatic shades and minimal elements. They’re a challenge for the viewer, who must then actively ‘read’ each work beyond the deft charcoal marks and punchy red prints.
Still, the two last pieces in End Game are not difficult to spot. The last to leave the artist’s studio, their appearance is noticeably different. In one, the flowers are replaced by a methodical arrangement of red dots, and in the other (Victim of Circumstances), the background is cloaked entirely in black with a single light throwing shadows across the lone figure laying in the centre of the canvas. Here, Poodien’s treatment of the figure is at a peak; the single source of light creates dramatic lines on the figure’s legs, contours of his face, and ribs, and the motionless figure evokes the hushed stillness of death. It is a climatic end to the series and poignant too. Why is the figure frozen? Where are the other symbols? Is the artist suggesting an end? Is this the End Game?
By Rachel Jenagaratnam
Poodien’s End Game marks both a departure and a continuation from the very piece that landed the artist a prize at the Malaysia Emerging Artists Award in 2009, Larger Than Life: Downfighting. In that work, the artist depicted himself lying with his back to the viewer, the canvas was covered – almost like a thin curtain - by various symbols and iconic images, and this contrast was intentional, affording both striking visual contradictions, as well as the evocation of the polarity between man and his environment. In End Game, Poodien reuses this tool, juxtaposing realistic charcoal drawings with printed red hibiscuses and roses, symbols of our nation and life respectively. Beyond this visual annotation, however, is the term End Game itself. Appropriated from one of the issues of Adbusters (an anti-consumerist magazine founded in the late eighties), the artist saw beyond its original use within socioeconomic parameters to encapsulate any moment of change – big or small – that involves courage and risk. So, like another similar term - Zero Hour - End Game denotes change and a momentous halt to an era. And for Poodien, this certainly rings true with his latest body of work.
The seven works in this series are the byproduct of a turning point in the artist’s life. Before, he was deeply involved with the local DIY-independent-subculture, which boasted a community-centric spirit, interests in music and art, and utopian ideals, but these have been forsaken for an introverted existence and the reexamination of various topics. In the artist’s own words: “It's also a changing period of my focus from the collective good to the individual, where I spent more time in isolation, re strategizing the game.” Poodien’s latest works, therefore, carry the baggage of this process, evidencing a variety of inspirations, as well as the artist’s own disconcertion with his environment. Local politics, racism, group interests, and the role of the Internet in loosening the stranglehold of previous powers are topics that are buried deep in these canvases, but visual clues in the works hint especially at Poodien’s solitary journey. The landscapes in particular, from the sparse terrain in The Gate to the gossamer clouds in Partial of Logic. And, if the seven works in this series appear bleak at all, it is because the subject of death is also not far from the artist’s mind; “The main idea and drive behind this work lingers around the subject of ‘death’. Death as in physical death to conceptual death. Dialectically, to be aware of death, I need to be aware of being alive and what it means to be alive - the duality… To sum it up, life seems like a journey towards death and looking for truths is like learning how to die. To be fully aware of this is to really enable the consciousness on an individual level and to gain individual freedom.”
Portraying the self in these images remarks on the artist’s intense personal interrogation in this body of work. His use of the self as subject matter in his artworks mirror the performance art the artist sometimes dabbles in, where the artist’s body becomes the canvas and the demarcation between the personal and the public is blurred. Indeed, Poodien professes to a wide range of interests. He is piqued by moments in art history (Happenings and Surrealism); the writings found in Malaysiakini and Adbusters; Postmodernism; historian Farish A. Noor’s What Your Teacher Didn’t Tell You and Carl Jung’s The Man and His Symbols; and the writings of Slavoj Žižek, who, British broadsheet, The Telegraph, has dubbed ‘the world’s hippest philosopher’.
“It was really black and white back then,” says the artist of his past, “but life carries you to the more 'gray' side of things and life circumstances always bombard you with counterarguments to the things that you believe in.” Works in End Game reflect this pondering. Poodien explores life’s shades of gray or dialectical qualities, swinging to and fro arguments like a pendulum. In Death Drive (Business As Usual), for example, Poodien references Marcel Duchamp’s iconic urinal and examines the contradictions in Duchamp’s legacy; “Duchamp, the first to question the aesthetic of art or anti-aesthetic, was seen as the figure behind liberating the practice of making art itself. But, he was then reasserted into the new aesthetic.” Art’s vast history is also probed elsewhere. Hallmarks of Surrealism clearly tinge some works with distant echoes of Leonora Carrington’s haunting self-portraits and Salvador Dali’s surrealist landscapes - particularly the artist’s work The Meditative Rose - springing to mind. With a finger in every pie, so to speak, it’s interesting then that the works contain themselves within monochromatic shades and minimal elements. They’re a challenge for the viewer, who must then actively ‘read’ each work beyond the deft charcoal marks and punchy red prints.
Still, the two last pieces in End Game are not difficult to spot. The last to leave the artist’s studio, their appearance is noticeably different. In one, the flowers are replaced by a methodical arrangement of red dots, and in the other (Victim of Circumstances), the background is cloaked entirely in black with a single light throwing shadows across the lone figure laying in the centre of the canvas. Here, Poodien’s treatment of the figure is at a peak; the single source of light creates dramatic lines on the figure’s legs, contours of his face, and ribs, and the motionless figure evokes the hushed stillness of death. It is a climatic end to the series and poignant too. Why is the figure frozen? Where are the other symbols? Is the artist suggesting an end? Is this the End Game?
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I would like to thanks all these people, without them this exhibition would be impossible : Bayu Utomo Radjikin and HOM, Nazli Aziz and Galeri Chandan, Rachel Jenagaratnam, Rahmat Haron, A. Samad Said, Thilaga Sulathireh and FNBKL, Anarka Luna, Po'oi, Samsuddin Wahab a.k.a Buden, Alex Yong, Fared Ayam and Avroco
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Three Young Contemporaries
Valentine Willie Fine Art Kuala Lumpur October 2010
Long Live Death | 2010 | Installation view
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| *study drawing for Long Live Death : I Am The Party |
Long Live Death: I Am the Party (the secret police) | 2010 | Silkscreen dye, fabric, plastic rafia thread and
pendaflour lights | Dimensions variable
pendaflour lights | Dimensions variable
Long Live Death: The Pig Monastery | 2010 | Charcoal, silkscreen, collage, acrylic, canvas and wood | 156 x 117 x 20 cm
Long Live Death : The Beginning | 2010 | single channel video | 4:16 minutes
*collaboration work with Tayanithi
Long Live Death: Zero Point | 2010 | Oil, acrylic, silkscreen, and collage on canvas | 156 x 117 cm
Long Live Death: End Game | 2010 | Oil, acrylic, silkscreen and collage on canvas | 156 x 117 cm
Long Live Death : Becoming | 2010 | Oil and acrylic on canvas | 156 x 117 cm
Long Live Death : Bury Your First Toy | 2010 | Manipulated mechanical toys, clear acrylic sheet, wood, hinge, padlock | time specific temporary installation, variable dimension
---- ----3YC archiving is under progress---- ----
curator's note here
My blog project in conjunction with the show is here
*It was too ambitious and greedy to touch death on different mediums, so the blog left not updated regularly..but it will grows..oct 2010.PI would like to thanks all these people, without them this exhibition would be impossible: Valentine Willie, Eva McGovern, Liza Ho, Snow Ng, Chi Too, Minstrel Kuik, Rahmat Haron, A. Samad Said, Mirdza Kamal, Tayanithi, Alex Yong, Samsuddin Wahab a.k.a Buden, Fared Ayam, Shieko Reto, Yuen Kok Leong, Wong Eng Leong, Fahmi Ismail, Jasmine Lyn, Faisal Mustaffa, Saiful Razman, Sharon Chin, Goh Lee Kwang, Sun Kang Jye, Donna Miranda, Irene Ira Agrivine, Cher Tan, Lan Anh and the audience.
Once Upon a Time in Malaysia/Al-Kesah
You Make Plans We Make History | 2010 | acrylic on canvas | 213 cm x 213 cm
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In this work, which try to translate (literally and conceptually) the integration of dead painting and living performance and also to play with the idea of art as an experience and commodity, I came up with the canvas painting where i painted the portrait of Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. It is not the full portrait, but the half upper part of the head in the songkok (traditional headdress), make it looks like an act of peeping into the space, watching on everyone's shoulder. At the same time, deliver the idea of anonymous or hidden authoritarian(in a more current version of subtle regime ruled by a bewildering diversity of means)by covering half part of the face, flowing out of the frame yet we still can recognize and aware of it existence.
During the opening and the exhibition time, I allowed the public, audience to apply black and white acrylic paint on it (or off the painting's frame) with the brushes and black and white acrylic paints that were prepared earlier, on the table next to the painting. There's no guideline or rules for the public to tell parts of their stories on the painting. Now the painting is alive and growing, changing it's face into what the active action brought it to be. The surface is filled with plural marks consist of texts and images, that came from different attention and values and layers after layers where it has lost ties with the background central figure and it's probability of connotation. The early batch who paint over the image of the painting, might be responded to the image and some of them might just paint and write their own thing without any kind of relation to the image. The same activities continued, but after sometime, the central figure was lost under layers of paint and the people who came to paint later just have references over the images and texts before them, they only manage to respond on that 'truth' or might just add their own stuff and not much responding to the previous story. Now it had grown more to off center (literally, the mark was also move to the areas out of the painting frame!). With or without the participants awareness, the act demystifying several things like the possessing or influencing power in the image of authority and the sacredness of individual ownership or purity of artwork(yet mystifying other things out of the process).
Few weeks later, before the show was closed, I wrote the statement 'You Make Plans, We Make History' over the whole painting as the exit/end point. The statement originally is an anonymous graffiti mark found in Genoa port in Italy in 2001 during the anti G8 protest. A strong and clear statement to urge people to participate in supposed to be democratic world and taking lives back from the authoritarian forces that penetrate more into areas of life uncolonised and uncommodified.
And finally I wrote my signature on the painting, like a life/death angel pouring/seizing the souls in/out of living and growing thing, collapsing the idealist and the realist. End of my/your story.
- poodien, March 2010
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Zinc Opening
Zinc Art Space Kuala Lumpur November 2009
Larger Than Life: We've Come For Your Children | 2009 | charcoal, acrylic, silkscreen dye and collage on canvas | 152 cm x 49 cm
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1 x Suitcase
Annexe Gallery Kuala Lumpur November 2009
" our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be" - Aldous Huxley
collage, acrylic and ink on paper
42 cm x 29.7 cm
2009
"the dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist as escapist, the man of vision a criminal" - Henry Miller
collage, acrylic and ink on paper
42 cm x 29.7 cm
2009
"In the future, there will be no longer be possible as ourselves as single static identities, instead our gender, races, culture will be fluid, ever shifting depending on the music we're listening to, the mood we are in, or the friends we're with. We will exist in a state of constant becoming, new identities always emerging" - Micah White
collage, acrylic and ink on paper
42cm x 29.7 cm
2009
"We arrive at the unknown, through the disordering of all the senses, that's the point" - Arthur Rimbaud
42cm x 29.7 cm
2009
" the trap for an artist is not the market, not the business and not the commerce. The danger is to lose the mission!"- Thomas Hirschhorn
29.7 cm x 42 cm
2009
"This society which eliminates geographical distance reproduce distance internally as spectacular separations" - Guy Debord
collage, acrylic and ink on paper
29.7 cm x 42 cm
2009
What About Me? What About the Others?
*linocut print postcard - front
14 cm x 19.5 cm
2009
postcard - back
installation view
“1 x SUITCASE”, a travelling art exhibition from Singapore which features works by 12 artists from Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. Each artist’s work is presented as an installation of drawings and other media that “[...]reveals the cause to journey, to record one’s involvement, memories of events, fragmented recollections of movements and hopes. It tells stories of transit, of travelogues, intimate stories, dreams and flavours.”
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What About Me? What About the Others?
In my case, I don’t travel a lot. I want to travel but I am most of the time unable to realize that because of my financial status. I love to travel and imagine myself as a bohemian sponsored artist, traveling around the globe, not restricted to any values, perspectives and being totally borderless physically and imaginatively. I still keeping this hope to travel the world one day.
Being born in a working/lower class family in the ‘developing country’ (third world actually) in the poorest part/state of the country leaving you with not much choices, other than being a good kid, stick to the tradition, study hard, get a good job, and helping out your family/parents in the future to come.
To be away from home when I was 13 was the first step to self discovery or escapism, from the figure of authority in the family institution and the traditional values that bound you to the public/society norms. Since then, on the personal level the mind’s travel (less physical) is more about that specific duality of ‘new life’ or self discovery’ and the escape route.
By getting myself in the subculture that have strong doses of radical politics & social criticism empowered me from the hopeless conformist to someone that see an individual as a part of bigger social organism that can affect change by becoming the change that you want and creating the medium by yourself. By questioning the surrounding, actively creating, and breaking away from any norms that systematically being imposed over me.
Other than my own difficulties that I faced, there‘s a more tough situation faced by others in the different circumstances. People who have to packed their suitcases and travel because of their life are in threat. People who becoming refugee, because of their country or their habitual residence, posed a threat of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or different political opinion. For them, they travel is a must, not because they want to.
By the time of this writing, 90% refugee in Malaysia comes from Burma. Who is trying to escape horror living under the military of the Junta. Unfortunately the fears they are facing come in different form over here. As Malaysia has not signed or ratified the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the statues of refugee. The Immigration Act does not distinguish refugee and asylum seekers from undocumented migrant workers. Refugees do not have rights in this country. Because of this they are subject to all sorts of abuses, by both the authorities and fellow Malaysians.
I and the refugees might have a different experience and context of travel, but both of us are on the travel, running away from the physical and non physical abuses of the shape of society and the power that be.
Being born in a working/lower class family in the ‘developing country’ (third world actually) in the poorest part/state of the country leaving you with not much choices, other than being a good kid, stick to the tradition, study hard, get a good job, and helping out your family/parents in the future to come.
To be away from home when I was 13 was the first step to self discovery or escapism, from the figure of authority in the family institution and the traditional values that bound you to the public/society norms. Since then, on the personal level the mind’s travel (less physical) is more about that specific duality of ‘new life’ or self discovery’ and the escape route.
By getting myself in the subculture that have strong doses of radical politics & social criticism empowered me from the hopeless conformist to someone that see an individual as a part of bigger social organism that can affect change by becoming the change that you want and creating the medium by yourself. By questioning the surrounding, actively creating, and breaking away from any norms that systematically being imposed over me.
Other than my own difficulties that I faced, there‘s a more tough situation faced by others in the different circumstances. People who have to packed their suitcases and travel because of their life are in threat. People who becoming refugee, because of their country or their habitual residence, posed a threat of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or different political opinion. For them, they travel is a must, not because they want to.
By the time of this writing, 90% refugee in Malaysia comes from Burma. Who is trying to escape horror living under the military of the Junta. Unfortunately the fears they are facing come in different form over here. As Malaysia has not signed or ratified the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the statues of refugee. The Immigration Act does not distinguish refugee and asylum seekers from undocumented migrant workers. Refugees do not have rights in this country. Because of this they are subject to all sorts of abuses, by both the authorities and fellow Malaysians.
I and the refugees might have a different experience and context of travel, but both of us are on the travel, running away from the physical and non physical abuses of the shape of society and the power that be.
-Poodien, 15 Oct 2009
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Malaysia Emerging Artist (MEA) 2009 Award
Soka Gakkai Kuala Lumpur October 2009
Larger Than Life : Conditioning | 2009 | charcoal, silkscreen ink, collage on canvas | 269 cm x 155 cm
Larger Than Life : Downfighting | 2009 | Charcoal, silkscreen ink, collage on canvas | 152 cm x 195 cm
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I leave this one with Frank Turner's 'Love, Ire and Song'. It might decipher some part of these :-)
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Love, Ire and Song
Love, Ire and Song
Well a teacher of mine once told me
That life was just a list of disappoints and defeats
And you could only do your best,
And I said "That's a fucking cop-out, you're just washed up and your tired, and when I get to your age I won't be such a coward"
But these day I sit at home, known to shout at my TV
And Punk Rock didn't live up to what I hoped that it could be
And all the things that I believed with all my heart when I was young
Are just coasters for beers and clean surfaces for drugs
And I packed all my panflets with my bibles at the back of the shelf
Well it was bad enough the feeling, and the first time it hit
When you realised your parents had let the world all go to shit
And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died
Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside
But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left
And got let down again by some poor excuse for protest
Yeah by idiot fucking hippies in 50 different factions
Who are locked inside some kind of 60's battle re-enactment
And I hung-up my banner in disgust and I head for the door
Oh but once we were young, and we were crass enough to care
But I guess you live and learn, we won't make that mistake again, no
Oh but surely just for one day, we could fight and we could win
And if only for a little while, we could insist on the impossible
Well we've been a good few hours drinking
So I'm going to say what everyone's thinking
If we're stuck on this ship and it's sinking
Then we might as well have a parade
Cos if it's still going to hurt in the morning
And a better plan's set to get forming
Then where's the harm spending an evening
In manning the old barricades, so come on old friends to the streets
Let's be 1905 but not 1917, let's be heroes, let's be martyrs, let's be radical thinkers
Who never have to test drive the least of their dreams
Let's divide up the world into the damned and safe
And then ride to the valleys like the old life brigade
And straighten our backs and we won't be afraid
And they'll celebrate our deaths with a national parade
So come on let's be young, let's be crass enough to care
Let's refuse to live and learn, let's make all our mistakes again yes
And then darling, just for one day, we can fight and we can win
And if only for a little while, we could insist on the impossible
Leave the mourning the to the morning
Yeah pain can be killed
With aspirin tablets and vitamin pills
But memories of hope, and glorious defeat
Are a little bit harder to beat
That life was just a list of disappoints and defeats
And you could only do your best,
And I said "That's a fucking cop-out, you're just washed up and your tired, and when I get to your age I won't be such a coward"
But these day I sit at home, known to shout at my TV
And Punk Rock didn't live up to what I hoped that it could be
And all the things that I believed with all my heart when I was young
Are just coasters for beers and clean surfaces for drugs
And I packed all my panflets with my bibles at the back of the shelf
Well it was bad enough the feeling, and the first time it hit
When you realised your parents had let the world all go to shit
And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died
Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside
But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left
And got let down again by some poor excuse for protest
Yeah by idiot fucking hippies in 50 different factions
Who are locked inside some kind of 60's battle re-enactment
And I hung-up my banner in disgust and I head for the door
Oh but once we were young, and we were crass enough to care
But I guess you live and learn, we won't make that mistake again, no
Oh but surely just for one day, we could fight and we could win
And if only for a little while, we could insist on the impossible
Well we've been a good few hours drinking
So I'm going to say what everyone's thinking
If we're stuck on this ship and it's sinking
Then we might as well have a parade
Cos if it's still going to hurt in the morning
And a better plan's set to get forming
Then where's the harm spending an evening
In manning the old barricades, so come on old friends to the streets
Let's be 1905 but not 1917, let's be heroes, let's be martyrs, let's be radical thinkers
Who never have to test drive the least of their dreams
Let's divide up the world into the damned and safe
And then ride to the valleys like the old life brigade
And straighten our backs and we won't be afraid
And they'll celebrate our deaths with a national parade
So come on let's be young, let's be crass enough to care
Let's refuse to live and learn, let's make all our mistakes again yes
And then darling, just for one day, we can fight and we can win
And if only for a little while, we could insist on the impossible
Leave the mourning the to the morning
Yeah pain can be killed
With aspirin tablets and vitamin pills
But memories of hope, and glorious defeat
Are a little bit harder to beat
*words by Frank Turner
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Pameran Amal Palestin and KL Film Fest & Art Exhibition
National Art Gallery & Annexe Central Market Kuala Lumpur 2009
The Apartheid Wall | 2008 | emulsion paint, silkscreen ink, acrylic and charcoal on canvas | 66 cm x 140 cm
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Cinemarama
360 Development Studio Desa Park City, Selangor November 2008
Potemkin : Screaming Womyn | 2008 | charcoal and acrylic on canvas | 91.4 cm x 106.8 cm
Potemkin: Odessa Step: the Cry | 2008 | charcoal and acrylic on canvas | 91.4 cm x 106.8 cm
Kepong : the Widow | 2008 | charcoal and acrylic on canvas | 91.4 cm x 106.8 cm
Kepong : Womyn and Children First | 2008 | charcoal on canvas | 91.4 cm x 106.8 cm
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This exhibition were a group show consist of 3 artists. I was invited by an artist friend, Fathullah Luqman Yusuff to join the exhibition by the theme related with movie/film. The other artist in the exhibition is Adeputra.
In my work, I captured scenes in two separate propaganda movies; Battleship Potemkin, 1925 by Sergei Eisenstein(1898 - 1948) from Russia, a pro-communist movie and Bukit Kepong, 1981 by Jins Shamsuddin, the anti-communist movie from Malaysia. Two scenes with the most emotionally charged and close up scenes from each movies were chosen to be applied on canvas. The act of creating the 'stills' of these particular scenes is like translating the attention of the directors to stamp these images as sign, to transmit meaning into the audience psyche forever. These two movies that were created in separate historical time line and place somehow effected me (and I believe the rest of the people)in the different period, situation and reality. It is interesting to see two opposing force of ideological line 'push and pull', would use the same strategy of orchestrated emotion in almost the same filming technique and selection of subjects to propagate vision and winning the public opinion. ... propaganda, art, emotion, ideological, patriarchal war, womyn and children...
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Open Studio
Mickey si Tikus Disney ( a gift to the world) | 2006 | charcoal on canvas | 230 cm x 150 cm
Siapa Di Dalam Kubu? (space for rent) | 2006 | Charcoal on canvas | 77 cm x 46 cm
Hari ini dan Sampai Bila (monoculture crush) | 2006| Charcoal, emulsion paint and acrylic on canvas | 60 cm x 60 cm each (4 panels)
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These works were created during my practical course for University. It was all about the irony in our capitalist culture when it deal with the issue of violence. The first work above, is an image of Afghanistan kid who worked in the weapon factory with the subtle dark charcoal of mickey mouse head capturing the mind of the kid, and the doodle/sketches with writing/statement around the main image on the canvas treated like the random mark/ graffiti on the wall. The whole capitalist war culture is totally about the conquering of the world resources, where at the end it is concentrated only in the hand of the few. From there all the imbalance in the distribution of wealth happen, which is another part of the world had abundant of money and power to impose their culture around the world. The rest of the world becoming the spectator, user, consumer or the dump site of the waste.
