Malaysians in Singapore

We made another pilgrimage down to Singapore’s NUS Museum a couple of weekends ago (yes, I am a bit late) for the opening of Ahmad Zakii Anwar’s new solo exhibition, Being. We were part of a sizable Malaysian contingent, all patriotically heading down to support one of our art world heroes.

Reclining Figure 1

In the ten large-scale charcoal drawings which make up the exhibition, I think it would not be too much to say that Ahmad Zakii seems to have elevated the tradition of the nude drawing to some higher plane – a physical sublime, or a spiritual classicism. This male figure, standing, seated, reclining, seems a contemporary answer to that extraordinary human being presented by the Renaissance masters, a sort of David for today, of different proportions, much as the artist himself would resist such grand comparisons.

Standing Figure 12

Standing Figure 14

Throughout Ahmad Zakii’s work, we are aware of an inherent spiritualism, an interest in humanism, in Islamic, especially Sufi teachings, and Eastern philosophy. For me, though, it is in this new body of drawings that his ideas find their most precise and powerful expression to date. It is as if each taut sinew, shadow of muscle, burnish of hair, and protruding vein pulses with what drives man’s life, and also with what destroys it. The poses, or ‘self-presentations’ seem to reference yoga positions, and even, as mentioned by Patrick Flores in the catalogue, “Zakii’s fascination with epic heroes in ersatz western films”. Man here, as expressed purely by his body, is heroic, fragile, awkward, beautiful….

…. before I try to write a gushing review, I urge you to try to catch this show. The drawings are particularly breathtaking as they are presented here, in a museum setting with much room for pause and meditation. The exhibition ends 7 June.

Also on at NUS 9-31 May, Spacing Identities: J Ariadhitya Pramuhendra which looks like it could be interesting.

In Singapore, I also spent a very enjoyable afternoon at SAM (Singapore Art Museum), and came out determined not to do any neighbour-bashing for at least a month. It reminded me of leisurely winter weekends in London and Paris in my ‘youth’, where I could seek refuge from the dark and the cold in museums and galleries and happily while four hours away looking at interesting, beautiful, clever and educational things, both strange and familiar.

SAM has very adequate air-conditioning as a reprieve from the equatorial heat. I began with the star exhibition of Wu Guanzhong’s donation of 113 works to SAM which covered rooms on three floors – finding it quite wonderful that this mainland essayist, theorist and oil painter began working in Chinese ink only at the age of 55, and  with such emancipated gusto.

I then thoroughly enjoyed the “PC” show on exhibit (PC – Permanent Collection) – Earth & Water: Mapping Art in Southeast Asia, which created a pretty compelling narrative of seas, rivers, river-crossings and land from early pioneer, modern and contemporary regional works in the collection. It was a good opportunity to revisit some key favourite works bagged by SAM as well as get a peek at some new acquisitions. I was glad to see Jakapan Vilaseenakul’s Mid-Life Crisis installed – it seems particularly resonant now with its slow but cunning crocodiles and watchful crows. PC works were also used in a modest show called Threads, exploring the use of fabric and fibres in art making, where I said hello to Mella Jaarsma’s exotic skin costumes. It’s good to know that the region’s creative output is not disappearing entirely into cold storage or secretive private hands. Thank you SAM.

There was also a show documenting a performance festival “Ket-Noi” for Singaporean and Vietnamese artists held at SMU (Singapore Management University) last year, during the Post Doi-Moi. I ended with a visit to the show of another Malaysian art hero: Latiff Mohidin: The Journey to Wetlands and Beyond, which featured a very important collection of this great poet and painter’s drawings recently donated by a Singaporean collector to SAM. A book comes out soon. It is a fortunate institution that can put up two major donations on exhibition at once.

We made a last stop at the Christian Lacroix exhibition at the National Museum, and this is where we really thought – “Oh why can’t we have this in KL?” A show which would be at home in the V&A, exploring that fabulous fashion icon’s work with opera, ballet and theatre, complete with flying tutus, in a pretty grand museum space. If you’re heading down to Singapore, this is a must-see, especially if you have young dancing daughters, or sons with creative flair.

Costumes for Carmen

Exhibition View

As begrudging neighbours we like to think that Singapore pours all this money into the arts, but they can’t force creativity out of their nation (just look at all the Malaysian content, patriots will say). I now beg to disagree – the children of Singapore get to grow up enjoying weird and wonderful modern and contemporary art from Southeast Asia, and even China and India, and the wild influential creations of someone like Christian Lacroix first hand, presented as spectacle but with all sorts of educational collaterals. They get culture on tap (and it’s mostly free, and undersubscribed) and they will grow up enriched. We can’t boast that now, can we? We can only cross the causeway for that occasional fix.

(BY)