Figuring the Malaysian
By Yee I-Lann
Note to Readers: This essay appeared in the UMS published catalog for an exhibition called 'Between Generations' that accompanied the exhibition in August/Sept 2007 as part of the 50th Merdeka celebrations.
The phrase 'Malaysian Identity' scares me. It is an oxymoron, a politically charged oxymoron. It seems so singular a pursuit to satisfy our pluralistic landscape. To borrow from Benedict Anderson's book on nationalism 'Imagined Communities,' he writes "Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/ genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined." So how do we collectively figure the Malaysian?
It is hard to look at a batik painting without simultaneously remembering the sarong. As we remember the sarong it is hard to remember a time without it. It is the fabric of our society. The sarong has become like a skin, its very form, its name, envelopes us, sarong. It is almost a secondary after thought that a sarong is (traditionally) batik - stained cloth. Batik envelopes us, batik wraps the Malaysian figure, stains our skin. So it is hard for us to look at a batik painting without feeling the stir of a national consciousness. It is this stirring that intrigues me.
The cultural continuity that Chuah Thean Teng exercised when he became the first to use and create batik as a fine art medium in those heady pre-Merdeka 50s, feels like a contemporary provenance of a new 'Malaysian' imagining. A post-war, postcolonial, early days of nationhood visualization. His batik works are full of idealism and romance. The sociological landscape is aestheticised to the point of being mythicised yet paradoxically, they are seemingly humble in their content. His paintings show the machinations and chores of daily life. 'Malaysian Reality' (1982) carefully choreographs (very) large breasted women into an epic of domestic bliss stitching, feeding their children durian, and generally looking dreamy in a tropical Eden garden. Every surface is detailed and busy with the intrinsic batik veins pulsating with a static energy. We see scenes of industry in 'Fishing Village' (1956) and 'Penang Waterfront' (1958), buzzing with activity yet each character is singularly absorbed by the task at hand only culminating as a whole into a collective driven movement and agenda. The iconographic language, the amnesia of negatives, the memory of cultural artifact feeds the propaganda and we get stirred. Chuah Thean Teng is a powerful 'Malaysia' artist.
Khalil Ibrahim continues Chuah Thean Teng's masterful stain on our conscious. In his batik painting 'Aku Sudah Cukup' (1983) we see the backs of men collectively heaving into a monumental form. Their actual activity is unclear but appear to be something to do with fishing, that other narrative that reminds us of our common diet and archipelagic heritage. Their bodies are lean and strong and nimble. They are the bodies of dancers that fluidly remember the shapes of silat and manliness, devoid of the fatness of greed yet wrapped in the curvaceous folds of the background environment. There are no longer the singular characters of Chuah Thean Teng's compositions but here a collective movement creates the monument.
I place Chuah Thean Teng's 'Malaysian Reality' and Khalil Ibrahim's 'Aku Sudah Cukup' side by side to see what this joint imagining will espouse. What strikes me is how secular the collective vision is, how gentle and confident and powerful. I feel the encompassing love! There are clear gender stereotypes, which I read as a reflection of a kind of Oedipus complex that, like the skin of the batik surface, crackles through within the rich earthy natural tones of colour. The son rivals his father for his mother's love. The Mother is of course that of nature, of The land, of The Nation. What then comes to my mind is a favourite reference in Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' where he writes about kitsch. "When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object... The feeling induced by kitsch must be a kind the multitudes can share. Kitsch may not, therefore, depend on an unusual situation; it must derive from the basic images people have engraved in their memories... Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch. The brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch."
Milan Kundera in the same book also writes "Political movements rest not so much on rational attitudes as on the fantasies, images, words and archetypes that come together to make up this or that political kitsch." Benedict Anderson in 'Imagined Communities' writes "nation-ness is virtually inseparable from political consciousness". I believe it is quite possible to argue that Chuah Thean Teng and Khalil Ibrahim's batik paintings are this 'political kitsch' and do paint an earnest 'nation-ness'. I think what makes them so appealing and significant to me is that they are inclusive as a national imagining. Batik is humble in its very nature and this permeates the paintings. Like the phrase 'Malaysian Identity', these paintings are also oxymora - humble epic declarations of national identities. Batik wraps the figuring. This is our Malaysian identity and it is comfortable.
Reference to following paintings:
'Malaysian Reality' Chuah Thean Teng, 1982 - Private Collection
'Fishing Village' Chuah Thean Teng, 1956, NAG Collection
'Penang Waterfront' Chuah Thean Teng, 1958, NAG Collection
'Aku Sudah Cukup' Khalil Ibrahim, 1983, UMS collection
Yee I-Lann is a professional artist and set designer.