dusun

Malaysian e-Journal of the Arts

June/July 2013
Ridiculously Free

siti zainon ismail chuah guat eng

georgette chen sand T yee i-lann izan tahir shia yih yiing sarah joan mokhtar in this issue

all girls issue

Thank you....
.... for taking a look at Malaysias 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.........

dusun

georgette chen 1906 - 1993

June/July 2013

cover sarah joan mokhtar editor martin bradley email [email protected]

contents

Dusun TM

page 6

editorial

page 9 georgette chen founder painter page 14 sand T minimalist artist page 22 yee i-lann fluid world page 29 siti zainon ismail poetry page 34 shia yih yiing vessels of art page 37 chuah guat eng the bride from ceylon page 40 izan tahir mapping the unconscious page 46 sarah joan mokhtar rojak page 50 next issue

editorial
Ed.

The time is ripe.

After long days and even longer nights Dusun - Malaysias first free digital arts and culture e-magazine, blossoms and bears fruit.

Dusun is a brand new venture. Its aim is to bring the very best of Malaysian 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 flickable 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 Malaysias 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.

contact email: [email protected] http://pspablog.blogspot.com

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 Acadmie Colarossi and Acadmie 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 Ts 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 modernist 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 andflat 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 Ts 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 Ts 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 Ts art, may imagine water droplets on the Pop Artist Allen Jones black patent leather boots (Voice of Silence), or perhaps the steamed windows of Dalis surreal Rainy Taxi (Dancing Lights (clear)) as seemingly represented by Sand Ts 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 appears 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 Cages Dream (1948) or Phillip Glasss 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 literally 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 Ts 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 Ts 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 Ts 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 Ts 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 Ts 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 Ts 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 Ts works. For that, essentially, fundamentally is the delicious tension of Sand Ts 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

Yee I-Lann (born 1971, Sabah) straddles 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 extensivedrawn 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. fluid word book cover

huminodun

SITI ZAINON ISMAIL SITI ZAINON ISMAIL SITI ZAINON ISMAIL

Eclipse Over My City

The angsana gasps, I cant 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 of the winds?

na gasps, I cant breathe

d pleads, be patient

least our budgies

l play on your boughs

the sighs and the prayer can see how dust- laden my leaves are

else do we dispose of
O Sun, why are you hiding your wings of fire?

d the prayer of the winds?

I cant breathe, either

you hiding your wings of fire?

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 dont 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)

nt breathe, either

blinding my red hot eyes

shield yourself from my heat

s are broken and barren backed to dust

w see for yourself

d strewn all over the earth

ddle the parched wasteland

on mountain peaks pierce the sky

ep under this dusty blanket ask me about my eclips. .....

Returning
Dont 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. Dont 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

Dont suffer this

for the truth at the end o

it would take countle

for you to decip

His strange wea

There the blurred vision o

will grow darker and

rivers will return to the

will birds will fl

out of their nes

in confusion

become stars

rising to the clou

Then will you understand the breat

that gathers the tears of g

that quietens the tremb

that gives birt

like the seeds of bloom

to charity and grat Dont ask

I always remember Saadi visiting his rose garden

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

member Saadi traversing the songs of the universe

s rose garden

ngs of the universe

ood with tears.

replete with followers

ight of dust

Miss Tanya!

million aromas

nto my dream first Saadi

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

ecting the petal

o ruin the love

s there.

prered again

op the petals endless love painting of the garden

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)

be there

e of God

nce genuine

e garden.

non Ismail

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.

VESSELS OF ART
images courtesy of shalini ganendra fine art

SHIA YIH YIING

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

She was Malaysias 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.

Chuah Guat Eng is a Malaysian writer born in Negeri Sembilan.

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.

The Bride from Ceylon The Bride from Ceylon The Bride from Ceylon
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 dont 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.

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 dont like him, we shant 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 doesnt like me? She wanted but didnt dare to add: What if he doesnt like the way I look? My dark skin? My protruding teeth? The fact that Im now twenty-two? That I never went to school and cant 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 didnt 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 wasnt 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 asleepat the marble tablewith 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. Hadnt 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 hadnt 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 sisters 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 fathers hand at the back of the photograph is not her sisters, but her own.

izan tahir
Born in Malaysia, Izan lived mainly in the UK where she gained a BA (Art & Design) from the London College of Printing in 1971. She worked as a graphic designer in the UK and Malaysia - with Terence Conran at the Conran Design Group, Robin Wade Design, Johan Design Associates, Leo Burnett and McCann Erickson. Izan returned to Malaysia in 2004 and is now a full time artist with a studio in Kuala Lumpur. She is a founding member of the Alternative Printmaking group, Goblock. She also produces collaborative work with Malaysian artist Marvin Chan under the name im. My creativity crucially draws upon the most ordinary of our inherent abilities. Noticing and remembering.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.

in touch

that place

find a way

come my friends

sarah joan mokhtar

At the age of 15 Sarah Joan Mokhtar became Malaysias 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 Competition 2007 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/September SURREALISM SPECIAL