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OCBC Bank
2013
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Circles Take The Square(s) | Public Mural
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MAP @ Publika | Public Art Project
2012
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The Lonely Crowd | Public Toilet
Corridor:
Male Toilet
Female Toilet:
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Long Live Food! | Public Mural
"Long Live Food!" | 2012 | Digital Collage Mural | 273 cm x 682 cm | EAT Food Village, MAP@Publika, Jalan Duta, Kuala Lumpur
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This piece is a commission work for main public mural artwork at E.A.T Food Village food court at Publika Shopping Gallery. The concept for the whole food court’s interior is visual imagery related with China/Chinese culture, to be filled with different kind of art and design. As a visual artist, this set and setting have been just a right situation and space to challenge and negotiate. A challenge to negotiate and create work that able to blend and balance my current artistic exploration (in interrogating the connection between aesthetic production, ideology and representation) and the ability of the site specific art piece to transpose commercial graphic decoration and advertising, and communicate with the public.
The main
inspiration to create this work is the curiosity to look into a less popular
modern art development from Social Realism art to institutionalized art of China’s
Socialist Realism. The postwar time marked the shift in the international
politics, social and culture where the world is divided into two opposite polar
of USSR’s communism and U.S.A’s capitalism and both side were utilizing art in
different way to propagate and advertise their selective system. China adopted
the Stalinist approach to institutionalized art under the state. As such the State
set the parameters for what it employed them to do, which radically change the long tradition of
China aesthetic in visual art. To understand my position and the state I’m in now
in the contemporary setting in relation to the history and also current
situation where China slowly shifting their system to become the new economy
powerhouse, inspire me to imagine the new representation by appropriating the
images from Communist China Socialist Realism art of the 1950 to 1979 and turn its
meaning around.
Each
image from different China propaganda poster from the 1950s to 1970s, that come
from different state campaigns and slogans, was cropped, cut out and edited
digitally and then rearranged them digitally in the new mural size picture
frame. The only new image that was not part of the propaganda posters that was collaged into the work was images of Apple i-pad substituting Mao's Little Red Book, hold sacredly by the subjects. The final work is a digital printed mural. The work is a satire that
reused the images in new composition and new narrative arrangement, which
before was part of State Party’s program to represent a ‘new’ China after the
People Republic of China formed a new government. The posters functioned as media
to be circulated all around China to communicate and teach the citizens of the
correct way of behavior, state policy and other campaign.
The commentary
that I try to mass communicate to the public now goes beyond the previous
historical context and the function of the images in their previous life. There’s
subtlety and subjectivity in what the new narrative could be, depending on how
familiar the public with the style and history of the images. It can also
become totally a meaningless pretty picture, a dull, symmetrical and
traditional composition mural; of beautiful landscape on the background, a big
parade on the middle ground and happy children with food and animal on the
foreground, suggesting that image as image itself was natural before it was chosen to be seen and used for specific ideas. It could also be a picture, jam packed with symbolism, commenting
on the current local and international political economy.
2011
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This System Renders Mad Both Side: For those who are part of it and those who reject it | Art Spool
This System Renders Mad Both Side: For those who are part of it and those who reject it | 2011 | Acrylic based paint, aerosol paint and spool | 90 cm (diameter) x 60 cm (depth)
2010
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Killing Us Softly Both Side: The vicious re-circle | Art Spool
Killing Us Softly Both Side, The Vicious Re-Circle | 2010 | Oil paint, acrylic, aerosol spray and spool | 150 cm (diameter) x 90 cm (depth)
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Pustaka Kiri
2010
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Red Revolution | Public Mural
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