Izat Arif & Tan Zi Hao at S.E.A. Focus 2024

Izat Arif & Tan Zi Hao

20 – 28 January 2024 I –8 P M Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore

S.E.A Focus 20 – 28 January 2024 I – 8 PM Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore WWW.SEAFOCUS.SG

TABLE of CONTENTS

Izat Arif Artist Statement 3 Artworks 4–20 Artist Profile 21

Tan Zi Hao Artist Statement Artworks Artist Profile

23 24– 34 35

Acknowledgements 36

1

Izat Arif

ARTIST STATEMENT

Aku Tahu Asal Kau Jadi (I know the origin from which you spring) In Aku Tahu Asal Kau Jadi (I know the origin from which you spring), Izat Arif’s expected duties as an artist, a contemporary Malay man, and a father, converge.

Since the birth of his son, Izat has employed various techniques to form a circle of protection around him, to ward off evil spirits and supernatural dangers that he (inconveniently) has been made to believe exist: he has recited various powerful Quranic verses to his son around the house; in turn, he listens to the song Father and Son (1970) by Yusof Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) to calm himself.

By shifting his attention to the sculptural representation of the Tiang Seri — the main pillar and “spine” of the Malay house — Izat’s duties as a father and his artistic practice merge into a single endeavour. The Tiang Seri is a metaphor for the head of the family and carries the responsibility and symbol of all that is good and bad concerning the home and the family that dwells within it. Various rituals are performed to determine its placement, and then its erection. Though typically reserved for families of aristocratic and royal standing, one can learn about these rituals and customs from a book entitled Tajul Muluk, which offers a guide to the geographical rituals that determine an area’s suitability for construction.

Izat’s presentation journeys us through his attempts to pay heed to ritual and tradition, all the whilst grappling with their uneasy and contradictory practice in our present time through the lens of a contemporary artist. Across the series, he pays homage to the Western aspirations of the new contemporary Malay, offering new tangkal (amulets) and revised manteras and recitations that harness traditional knowledge for adaptation today. “Live, Laugh, Love”. Such is the way that Izat meditates on the various methods one might employ on “the road to salvation”.

I ZAT A R IF

3

Tiang Rumah Baru Untuk Melayu Baru Duit Baru 2023, Installation; solid balau wood, meranti wood pole, meranti wood planks, soil, single-channel video with audio, Dimensions variable Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

I ZAT A R IF

6

Father and Son 2023, Graphite on paper, 85 ∑ 60 cm

I ZAT A R IF

7

Dreaming Of A Better Gated Community 2023, Graphite on paper, 85 ∑ 60 cm

I ZAT A R IF

8

Angel POV And Some Other Devices 2023, Graphite on paper, 85 ∑ 60 cm

I ZAT A R IF

9

Conditions Must Be Perfect 2023, Graphite on paper, 85 ∑ 60 cm

I ZAT A R IF

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Pokok Seribu Guna 2023, Graphite on paper, 85 ∑ 60 cm

I ZAT A R IF

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Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

Berdoalah Untuk Kesejahteraan Nusantara 2023, Graphite on paper, 85 ∑ 60 cm

14

Keris, Seaweed And Hell Fire 2023, Graphite on paper, 85 ∑ 60 cm

I ZAT A R IF

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Landscape Architecture Will Save Us All From Environmental Catastrophes 2023, Graphite on paper, 85 ∑ 60 cm

I ZAT A R IF

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Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

I ZAT A R IF

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Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

I ZAT A R IF

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Tunjuk Langit 2023, Balau wood, 91.5 ∑ 7.6 ∑ 7.6 cm Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

I ZAT A R IF

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Tetar Tanah (chachak tiang rumah) 2023, Single-channel video, Full HD, 2 min 10 sec (loop)

I ZAT A R IF

20

ARTIST PROFILE

I ZAT A R IF

Izat Arif (b. 1986, Malaysia) is an artist based in Kuala Lumpur whose works range from drawings and installations to videos and objects. In Izat’s work, power structures are given their own personal identities, with him cheekily role-playing characters of our puppet masters in property development, bureaucracy, and art criticism. His approach is often journalistic, where satire is fused with a responsive leaping between different subjects that speak to current revelations in popular media and culture.

In recent years, Izat’s concerns have broadened to include not only the actions and excesses of those involved in the production of power but equally to those who give weight to their claims. His predominant material focus on linoleum sheet — a cheap vinyl material for interior furnishing with prints that imitate more luxurious surfaces — challenges his viewer’s positions, aspirations or complicities in the perpetration of power; tapping into everyday material and topics as a way to engage more deeply with the spectrum of involvement.

Recent solo exhibitions by Izat include Gentle Reminders, Richard Koh Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2020); Kenangan itu, hanya mainan bagimu…, Mutual Aid Projects, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2020) and Semangat Kejiranan, Everybody Loves Good Neighbours, The Vitrine, NTU CCA, Singapore (2018). Selected group exhibitions include Travel Agency, presented by A+ Works of Art, HeluTrans ArtSpace, Singapore (2022); Fragmenting Yesterday, Reshaping Tomorrow, ICAD, Jakarta (2022); Locating Malaysian Contemporary Art: The Echo Boomers, Richard Koh Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2020); and Domestic Bliss, Pollination, co-developed with The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre Vietnam, Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2019). In 2022, Izat was a recipient of the ACME-Khazanah Artist Residency in London.

21

Tan Zi Hao

ARTIST STATEMENT

Bags of Stories Over the years I began to pay attention to an insect popularly known as “household casebearers” or “plaster bagworms” (Phereoeca spp.). Pervasive in domestic spaces, they live in the most inconspicuous corners, clinging on to the most marginal fringes like droplets of gray. As the name suggests, a household casebearer survives as a larva bearing an oval case before metamorphosing into a moth. To weave the case about double its length and triple its width, the larva generates silk filaments to string together soil particles, insect droppings, dust accumulated from household goods, human hair, and others. They feed on spider webs, dead insects, textile fibers, human hair, and other organic detritus.

Apropos of its scientific name, Phereoeca (literally, a “bearer of house”), the household casebearer’s habit of towing a house of its own within our domestic space readily illuminates a posthuman ontology where distinctions between culture and nature, domestic and wild, human and nonhuman, blur. When these cases are magnified, as in this series of macro photographs, what from afar has a monochromatic appearance suddenly dissipates into a vibrant mesh of material difference. A piece of hair fragment is now next to a microplastic; a paint chip fallen from the ceiling now lives cheek by jowl with a separated arthropod leg; an eraser crumb fragment sits within strands of textile fiber that were disentangled from a floor cloth, dotted with dead skin cells from the soles of our feet.

These household casebearers present a parallel universe in which a part of ourselves, or discards from our bodies and our homes, are woven into their cases, their homes. These cases are massive — not in terms of size, but in terms of scale — for they weave together debris from different time and space, creating a cosmos of its own, where we are just a speckle of dust. We are equalised in this process of decomposition and decay as in the process of nurturing newborn larvae. The plausibility of ontological symmetry in the Anthropocene is attested to by these carrier cases. Here, we finally see ourselves becoming dust.

TAN ZI HAO

23

Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

Bags of Stories, No. 19 2023, UV printing on fabric and lightbox, 116 ∑ 9 ∑ 302 cm

TAN ZI HAO

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Bags of Stories, No. 2020 2023, UV printing on fabric and lightbox, 110 ∑ 9 ∑ 254 cm

TAN ZI HAO

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Bags of Stories, No. 9 2023, UV printing on fabric and lightbox, 106 ∑ 9 ∑ 250 cm

TAN ZI HAO

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Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

33

Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus, photographed by Darren Soh

ARTIST PROFILE

TAN ZI HAO

Tan Zi Hao (b. 1989, Malaysia) is an artist, writer, researcher, and educator. His works have covered a wide range of subjects from translingual practices, imaginary creatures, to posthuman entanglements. Dwelling on issues of ontological insecurity, his works present a deep investigation about what it means to be singular-plural in an age of global and ecological interdependence.

Since 2018, Tan has produced a number of works revolving around the household casebearer. As a domestic insect that thrives on dust and human decay, the household casebearer carries on living with fragments of one’s dying life. For Tan, the household casebearer provides a valuable prism for rethinking the human condition at the intersection of ageing and ecology.

As an artist who moves across different disciplines, Tan also holds a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. His scholarship has been published in Art in Translation, Indonesia and the Malay World, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. In tandem with the Bags of Stories series (2023) presented at S.E.A. Focus 2024, Tan has recently published “Bags of Stories: Thinking with Household Casebearers in the Anthropocene” in the journal ARTMargins (MIT Press, 2023).

Past exhibitions include Prosthetic Memories, A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2023); Dream of the Day, Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2023); Synthetic Condition, UP Vargas Museum, Manila, Philippines (2022); Kathmandu Triennale 2077, Patan Museum, Lalitpur, Nepal (2022); Phantasmapolis: 2021 Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan (2021); Crypto for Cryptids, JWD Art Space, Bangkok, Thailand (2021). In 2023, Tan’s work was selected for the SAM S.E.A. Focus Art Fund.

35

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A+ Works of Art and the artists would like to thank the following individuals for their support and contributions:

IZAT ARIF would like to thank:

TAN ZI HAO would like to thank:

Umar Sharif Siti Gunong Ryan Tang Alvin Lau Rizal, Zoe, Jiwa & Haziq (kedai_co) Mahen Bala Anwar Suhaimi Karl Nadzarin Ihsan Hassan Anas Afandi A+ Works of Art / S.E.A. Focus team

Alvin Lau Jason Chor Eddy Izuwan Musa Wang Jiabao Family of artist A+ Works of Art / S.E.A. Focus team

And my love to Eza & Omar, Fazillah & Saiful

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A+ WORKS of ART d6 - G - 8, d6 Trade Centre 801 Jalan Sentul 51000 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia +60 18 333 3399 info@aplusart.asia www.aplusart.asia Instagram/Facebook @aplusart.asia

Copyright © 2024. A+ WORKS of ART, and the artists. All rights reserved.

Artists Izat Arif Tan Zi Hao

All articles and illustrations contained in this catalogue are subject to copyright law. Any use beyond the narrow limited defined by copyright law, and without the express of the publisher, is forbidden and will be prosecuted.

Editor Denise Lai

A+ WORKS of ART is a contemporary art gallery based in Kuala Lumpur, with a geographic focus on Malaysia and Southeast Asia. Founded in 2017 by Joshua Lim, the gallery presents a wide range of contemporary practices, from painting to performance, drawing, sculpture, new media art, photography, video and installation. Its exhibitions have showcased diverse themes and approaches, including material experimentation and global conversations on social issues. Collaboration is key to the ethos of A+ WORKS of ART. Since its opening, the gallery has worked with artists, curators, writers, collectors, galleries and partners from within the region and beyond, and continues to look out for new collaborations. The gallery name is a play on striving for distinction but also on the idea that art is never without context and is always reaching to connect — it is always “plus” something else.

Project Manager Hariz Raof Graphic Designer Kenta.Works