Zai Kuning and Azizan Paiman Illuminate Invisible Borders
The title of Zai Kuning and Azizan Paiman's exhibition Invisible Border (5 November–18 December 2022) at Ota Fine Arts Singapore recalls the thousands of Singaporeans and Malaysians who crossed the Johor-Singapore Causeway to meet their loved ones as the border fully reopened on 1 April 2022—the first time since its Covid-19 pandemic-incited closure.
Zai Kuning, What we have are rivers, mud, stones, sand, earth and trees, but what they see is gold (2022). Acrylic and gold leaf on paper clay, wooden panel, single-channel video. Dimensions variable. © Zai Kuning. Exhibition view: Invisible Border, Ota Fine Arts Singapore (5 November–18 December 2022). Courtesy Ota Fine Arts Singapore/Shanghai/Tokyo.
It was tempting to see the title as an attempt to needle at long-standing cross-border tensions between Singapore and Malaysia. But the artists struck a more restrained tone, knitting together histories of sociopolitical order, as each used his work to explore problems such as inequality, corruption, environmental destruction, and authoritarianism.
I've never cared much for Malaysian politics, yet I found myself moved by Azizan Paiman's series 'Souvenir' (2022): 21 watercolour works on paper that show an array of references to Malaysian politics as seen through direct speech, rumours, gossip, and arguments.
In one work, the phrase 'As long as Bersatu is in charge, UMNO will not be alright' accompanies the image of a long-necked demon that shares a body with a centaur in work boots. In another, three gremlin-like monsters sporting spiky claws and open, gnawing mouths sit alongside the words 'But justice is a long road, sometimes, you can get it here, you can get it elsewhere.'
Caricatures of tipsy and jovial god-clowns in a state of drunken stupor—resembling political leaders whose charming words served to mislead—could be deciphered by Malaysian and Singaporean viewers alike.
The dynamics of these messages and the conditions to which Malaysian society is subjected are amplified by Paiman's performance and installation The Collapse of an Orchestra (2021), which collages a contemporary landscape of authoritarian and corrupt governments.
The piece sees the artist muttering Malay mantras to his paintings, in tones alternately inflamed or numbed. As he walks around the gallery space lined with beer bottles, he smashes them with a hammer and drops the broken pieces into glass jars displayed on plinths.
Propped against a grid on the wall, a row of gas masks depict parliament houses from different countries including Japan, Mongolia, and Malaysia. Like politicians, these masks cover the personalities behind them, who orchestrate the sociopolitical situations in their home countries.
In an adjacent room, light emanates from hundreds of ceremonial gold-coated clay bowls, neatly placed on black plywood surfaces; Zai Kuning's installation What we have are rivers, mud, stones, sand, earth and trees, but what they see is gold (2022) is a vision of splendour and formal rigour.
Kuning's investigation into the land and sea reflects on the lamentation of the Orang Laut—people of the sea, or nomadic indigenous fishermen living in the Riau Archipelago—who were forced away from their land to make way for more projects and coastal developments.
On the opposite side, hundreds more black clay bowls swarm around a gold bowl in the centre, sharply contrasting the grey gallery floor on which they are placed.
Running texts related to the installation's title are projected on the wall, fusing the act of reading and seeing. The result is an immersive and experiential work that extends a metaphorical reading of politics and sociology.
In Kuning's accompanying performance, the artist encircles the installation dressed in a cloth with a golden gong strapped to it. The instrument makes a resonant, echoing sound as the artist moves, chants, and dances to a local groove.
In between drinking from a gold bowl, Kuning speaks to audiences: 'You talk about god and you kill their trees, you take their stones, you pee on their rivers... .'
Through this vernacular performance that improvises animist stories and historical accounts of swamp lands and the sea, the artist reimagines the cult aspects of Orang Laut life, which calls into question the body, community, ideologies, and spirituality.
The spectre of capitalism and the ecological crisis—in Malaysia and on a global scale—makes these pertinent topics, yet Kuning and Paiman choose to interpret and thus amplify these mechanisms rather than offer a panacea. From this acknowledgement, a sense of collective responsibility emerges. —[O]
