⏊IWE – Blank Canvas

⏊IWE

16 Mar 2024 - 26 May 2024

Kah Bee Chow, Hasanul Isyraf Idris, Nurul Ain binti Nor Halim and Wong Hoy Cheong

Curated by Christina Li

Exhibition Guide: Download Here

Like cities, time is not static. It can stay still, advance, and disintegrate alongside its inhabitants. There are pockets that move slower, others that make speedy headways; some are stuck, as if caught in traffic or a crumbling façade left to weather time’s progression. On the main thoroughfare of Bukit Mertajam, past the outmoded barbershops, watch sellers and sundry stores, was an inconspicuous clothing store. There hung a T-shirt with a perplexing jumble of alphabets, like a prompt asking, “What is the flipside of time?”

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Stories are portals across temporalities. In an era where feeling chronologically unrooted becomes commonplace, the experience of time, as well as the memories and desires they carry can be deeply idiosyncratic and manifold. The poet Dionne Brand wrote, “All artists are involved in their time.” Assembled under the umbrella of ⏊IWE are narratives that probe into time as material and agents of change, and consequently undermine ideologies and values prevalent within our society. These works not only chronicle personal mementos, offer alternative histories and ways of living, but also function as brief pauses to dislocate from the present. In doing so, they open other ways of how one can relate to our own time.

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⏊IWE is the outcome of Christina Li’s three-week long curatorial residency at Blank Canvas in November 2023.

RE: Looking

Wong Hoy Cheong

2003

Video Installation

30 minutes 42 seconds

First shown in the Venice Biennale, Wong Hoy Cheong’s now seminal work, RE: Looking explores the slippery threshold between fact and fiction in this mockumentary that imagines an inverted past where Malaysia, a former colonial power has to come to terms with the its Austrian subjects and its post-colonial condition. Meticulously constructed with found material but with a fictional twist in a once familiar narrative, this topsy turvy portrayal of Malaysia’s 250-year rule over Austria in a BBC-style investigative TV program from make-believe MBC (Malaysian Broadcasting Corporation) borrows, and in turn critiques the mechanisms of art and media, and how representation can distort and manipulate the way we perceive our past and present. The reconstructed living room setting adds a layer of disconcertion, inviting visitors into this unsettling liminal space where the dynamics around hegemony, global migration, race and class is radically recast in a new light.

Hasanul’s new evocative series Nightjar is inspired by his nocturnal walks. They are conceived as a response to reclaim a body desensitized from the onslaught of visual, mental, and internal noises inherent within our fast-paced contemporary life and the urban environment. Through this daily practice of walking, the artist is compelled to thoroughly embrace every sensation and emotion in minute detail. These walks are pockets of contemplation that removes him from the demanding cacophony and extends time that otherwise flies by. In this delicate timezone that Hasanul has reclaimed for himself, is a profound moment of discovery for his surroundings and himself where he feels at home in his own time and space.

The artist writes, “During these long nights of walking my vision gets thinner. My olfactory senses heighten, and I can smell the scent of flowers that are released only at night to attract pollinators such as bats and moths. It sometimes crosses my mind that these trees could be as old as my father. It transports me to another world, in which I bathe in the stars and feel their seeming motion; I watch the moon change its colour each night or catch a glimpse of what might be a shooting star and hearing the occasional nightjar. Silence can be an abstract concept whereas walking is clearly an action. Night walking distances me from the distraction of everyday life and acts as a purifier that sanctify me and pushes me to navigate without the help of applications and give in to the feeling of being lost.”

Dust and Smoke, Skin of Water

Hasanul Isyraf Idris

2024

Ink, watercolor, and guoache on cotton paper

30 x 21 cm each

Foxfire

Hasanul Isyraf Idris

2024

Ink, watercolor, and guoache on cotton paper

30 x 21 cm

Kisah Sekali (Once Tales)

Nurul Ain binti Nor Halim

2024

12 ash paintings

13.5×19 centimeters each

Using leftover ash from her pottery works, Ain’s suite of paintings capture tales that has long been passed on orally throughout her family. The phantom figures and other-worldly scenes outlined on these miniature works on paper, some cautionary tales, others curious occurrences, serve as fleeting records before the ash markings dissipate with time’s passing.

Placed in the storage area of Blank Canvas is an intimate video that draws from our quotidian experiences, as well as our evolving relationship to family and, in this case, to our mothers. Curator Wong Bing Hao describes the work: “Chow records her mother arranging flowers in their family home in Penang, Malaysia, while watching a melodramatic Malaysian or Singaporean Chinese television show. The majority of the frame is restlessly vacant, as Chow’s mother occupies the left background throughout the video. Chow’s father makes a brief cameo.

About halfway through the 14-minute-long digital video, Chow’s mother starts to pay close attention to a tense exchange between a disgraced daughter who begs her reluctant father to be taken back into the family fold. Viewers never see the television content itself, only the silence that transpires between the artist and her mother. A moment, perhaps, of tacit appreciation. In a glass partition behind Chow’s mother, momentary reflections of the television’s shutter-like brightness can be glimpsed.”2 As the viewers witness Chow’s mother arranging flowers in real time, one is reminded on the familiar and uncanny, the eventful and mundane moments, all of which constitute how we find belonging in an ever-changing world.

Effeminacy

Kah Bee Chow

2012

Digital Video

14 minutes 5 seconds

Effeminacy

Kah Bee Chow

2012

Digital Video

14 minutes 5 seconds

Placed in the storage area of Blank Canvas is an intimate video that draws from our quotidian experiences, as well as our evolving relationship to family and, in this case, to our mothers. Curator Wong Bing Hao describes the work: “Chow records her mother arranging flowers in their family home in Penang, Malaysia, while watching a melodramatic Malaysian or Singaporean Chinese television show. The majority of the frame is restlessly vacant, as Chow’s mother occupies the left background throughout the video. Chow’s father makes a brief cameo.

About halfway through the 14-minute-long digital video, Chow’s mother starts to pay close attention to a tense exchange between a disgraced daughter who begs her reluctant father to be taken back into the family fold. Viewers never see the television content itself, only the silence that transpires between the artist and her mother. A moment, perhaps, of tacit appreciation. In a glass partition behind Chow’s mother, momentary reflections of the television’s shutter-like brightness can be glimpsed.”2 As the viewers witness Chow’s mother arranging flowers in real time, one is reminded on the familiar and uncanny, the eventful and mundane moments, all of which constitute how we find belonging in an ever-changing world.

Kisah Sekali (Once Tales)

Nurul Ain binti Nor Halim

2024

12 ash paintings

13.5×19 centimeters each

Using leftover ash from her pottery works, Ain’s suite of paintings capture tales that has long been passed on orally throughout her family. The phantom figures and other-worldly scenes outlined on these miniature works on paper, some cautionary tales, others curious occurrences, serve as fleeting records before the ash markings dissipate with time’s passing.

Dialogue with the Artist

22 March 2024, Friday, 6:00pm

Moderator:
Christina Li

Participants:
Kah Bee Chow
Nurul Ain binti Nor Halim
Wong Hoy Cheong

Watch on Youtube

ABOUT the Artist

Kah Bee Chow works with forms of enclosures in relation to animals and the human body, with close attention to particularities of space and site, through sculpture, video and text. She lives and works in Malmö and Penang, Malaysia. Chow received her MFA in 2012 from Malmö Art Academy in Sweden and her BFA in 2004 from Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.

www.kahbeechow.com/

Hasanul Isyraf Idris (b.1978, Perak, Malaysia) was trained at Mara University of Technology (UiTM), Perak, Malaysia and is presently based in Penang, Malaysia.

His practice spans a variety of media, including painting, drawing, installation, video work and sculpture. His works typically manifest hybridity of fictional and surreal iconography drawn from the personal invention as from a mélange of pop cultural references, such as comic books, science fiction, street art and film. He personifies his personal struggles as an artist with strange characters and creatures that inhabit his invented universes.

His solo exhibitions include Spiritual Zoo (2021) at Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore, HOL: Scab: Crying Tiger In The Night Market (2019) at Art Jakarta, and HOL Chapter 2.3, Wound: Environment of Naga and Doubt (2018) at VOLTA New York. His works have been presented in group exhibitions such as Another Continent (2022) at Taitung Art Museum, Taiwan, Tranchée Racine (2021) at Halle Saint Pierre, Paris and FIELD MEETING Take 6: Thinking Collections (2019) at 13th Edition of Asia Contemporary Art Week, Dubai.

Hasanul was the winner of the Young Contemporary Arts Award (2007) at Balai Seni Visual Negara, Kuala Lumpur. His work is most recently featured in publication In The Heads of Stéphane Blanquet Halle Saint Pierre, Paris (2021) by United Dead Artists. He also had two self-published zines, 3 TABIB HooHaZat (2021) and Kakrol (2017).

www.instagram.com/hasanulisyrafidris/

Nurul Ain Binti Nor Halim (b.2000, Bangkok, Thailand), in short Ain, is an artist born in Bangkok, Thailand and raised in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan, which makes her have a diasporic identity and longing for belonging. Her practice includes videos, audio, and installations that focus on themes such as belonging, language, memories, and national and cultural identity. Her work reflects her interest in post-colonial discourses, such as cultural preservation, exoticism, craftsmanship, and archives. Besides that, she questions the position and role of artists in decolonization, with references to Aimé Césaire, “Man of Culture”, and how one embraces a post-colonial history and reconstructs itself through culture and arts.

Wong Hoy Cheong (b.1960, Penang, Malaysia ) studied critical theory & literature, developmental psychology & education, and visual arts from Brandeis University, Harvard University and University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

As an artist, he works in a range of visual media including photography, video, drawing, and installation. His work often engages with communities and explores the retrieval of marginalised narratives; addresses the intersections of authenticity and indigeneity, migration and globalisation; and the slipperiness that lies between fact and fiction, past and present.

Wong has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Eslite Gallery, Taipei (2010), NUS Museum, Singapore (2008), National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (2004 & 1996); Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (2004), Kunsthalle, Vienna (2003); John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2003); and Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool (2002).

He has also exhibited in international group exhibitions including the Folkestone Triennial (2021 &2017), Sydney Biennial (2018), Sunshower (Mori Art Museum, 2017), Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015), No Country (Guggenheim Museum, 2013), Photo Espana (2011), Lyon Biennale (2009), Fukuoka Triennial (2009 & 1999), Taipei Biennial (2008), Istanbul Biennale (2007), Guangzhou Triennial (2005), Liverpool Biennial (2004), Venice Biennale (2003), and Gwangju Biennale (2000) and Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (1996).

Wong lives and works in Penang, Malaysia.

ABOUT the Curator

Christina Li is an independent curator and writer who lives and works in Amsterdam. She has taken up numerous curatorial roles at Para Site in Hong Kong (2005–2008), SKOR in Amsterdam (2009–2010), basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht (2010–2011) and as director of Spring Workshop in Hong Kong (2015– 2017). She has presented exhibitions in Europe and Asia, including the Pavilion of Finland at the 59th Venice Biennale, Hong Kong’s presentation at the 58th Venice Biennale, Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, Z33 in Hasselt, and most recently the second edition of Ghost–a triennial video and performance art series in Bangkok. Over almost two decades, she has commissioned and worked with artists including Neïl Beloufa, Xinyi Cheng, Elmgreen & Dragset, Lee Kit, Rabih Mroué, Pan Dajing, Koki Tanaka, Pilvi Takala, Emily Wardill, Wu Tsang and Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Art Review Asia, LEAP, Parkett, Spike, and Yishu Journal of Contemporary Art among others.

The Artist

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