[Non-review] Wawasan 2020
Worth a check-out: Valentine Willie’s latest show, Wawasan 2020: The Malaysian Dream.
Wawasan takes as its jumping-off point Mahathir’s programmatic vision of Malaysia in the year 2020: a progressive, affluent, unified utopia, no longer “developing” but “developed” – to use an often ill-adjudicated prescription. The show presents a fairly diverse congregation of the country’s emerging generation of artists, a cross-section of imaginaries conjuring “their own future through the lens of the past, present and beyond, taking Malaysia’s plans for modernity as outlined in Wawasan 2020 (Vision 2020) … The premise being that by 2020 Malaysia would be a self sufficient industrialised nation that encompasses economic prosperity, social well being, world class education and political stability .” It “seeks to uncover how do [sic] artists feel about where Malaysia is going given the current socio-political landscape of the country. What are the concerns, anxieties, optimisms, and hopes for the future of Malaysia Boleh?”
The de-suturing, in other words, of faultlines running beneath the level of uncritically affirmative public discourse in Malaysia – the political, religious and racial fractures exposed by even the slightest social judders, so close to the surface of the everyday do they operate – constitutes the chief thematic thrust. Immediacy of expression seems to be key to the most compelling articulations here: Jalaini Abu Hassan’s imbrication of various gestures, materialities and referential orbits in The Prince and the Pauper; the excavation of social invisibility sedimented in squatter sub-culture by Eiffel Chong; Gan Chin Lee’s disrupted tableau limning the contours of various alterities; Anurendra Jegadeva’s iconographic mash-up of personal narratives and marginalized historical and political motifs; Sharon Chin’s installation dealing with outlawed texts, which invites the viewer’s participation and subsequently emits a flashing light and screeching noise, the resultant sensorial trauma evoking in a very visceral way the public histrionics attending the censored object and its perceived transgressions.
Other works seemed less cogent – or remained inadequately contextualized – but the show’s inspiration is laudable.
Wawasan 2020 runs at Valentine Willie Fine Art till 22 April.
The Prince and the Pauper (2012), Jalaini Abu Hassan. Bitumen and collage fabric on canvas.
[top] Untitled #24 and Untitled #19 (both 2009), Eiffel Chong. Digital prints.
The Road to Wawasan 2020 (2012), Gan Chin Lee. Oil on linen.
Migrant Altar (2012), Anurendra Jegadeva. Acrylic and oil on canvas with objects.
Portable Sensors series (2012), Sharon Chin. Electronic buzz wires in wooden boxes.
The Way Forward (Making 2020 Happen Needs 6/8 Vision) (2012), Stephen Menon. Silkscreen and acrylic on canvas.
The Sun Will Rise in the East and Deliver Us From This Long Night (2012), Yee I-Lann. Digital print.
Fire and the Flower (2012), Munkao. Acrylic on canvas, and video.
Continuity and Change (2012), Ramlan Abdullah. Aluminium.
