Yim Yen Sum: Threshold of Memoirs

in

F-1-9 front 2021

Gauze dyed

acrylic, embroidery on gauze 35.5 × 15 × 10 cm

F-1-9 back 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze 35.5 × 15 × 10 cm

F-1-6 to F-1-8 front 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze 33 × 26 × 10 cm

F-1-6 to F-1-8 back 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

cm

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze 33 × 80 × 10 cm

B-2-8 to B-2-17 front 2021

B-2-8 to B-2-17 back 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

A-1-1 to A-1-7 front 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze 34 × 50 × 10 cm

A-1-1 to A-1-7 back 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

× 10 cm

C-2-29 to C-2-35 front 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze 31 × 50

C-2-29 to C-2-35 back 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

F-2-11 to F-2-39 front

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

F-2-11 to F-2-39 back 2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

Intertwined I

2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze 168 × 98 cm

Intertwined II

2021

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze 166 × 100 cm

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Sewing is an ancient practice, a traditional craft. Living in our growing industrial age where everything moves at such a fast pace, I use sewing as a method to negate this. What I seek to emphasise is the practice’s need for slowness and patience to create a link and balance between the past and present. As our environment is changing rapidly, many new buildings are being erected at a rapid pace and, simultaneously, many others are disappearing in the blink of an eye. The speed at which urban development is occurring has left many inhabitants feeling anxious and uneasy.

In more recent years, the concept of returning to the hand-made and more manual modes of making, as well as opting for a slower pace in life has become increasingly popular. I think this is because we have found familiarity with our history and culture, which has in turn aroused feelings of nostalgia towards our past.

Our culture should exist everywhere around us, from what we see to what we feel of our surroundings. It should be captured on our streets, architecture, arts, crafts and should indirectly affect us and our thoughts and values. If visual evidence of our culture diminishes, this loss should provoke us to question what else we can believe in, who we are as a society, where we’re from and which direction we’re likely to go toward in the future.

As a result of the demolition of traditional buildings due to urban development, my use of needlework aims to reproduce their visual qualities in order to preserve and to save them. To do so is to maintain their memories and the warmth that they once provided to their communities.

I like repeating small units of artworks in a large format, because whole structures such as these allow us to feel the process of life, asking us to get closer to it. It gives us strength.

I try to preserve time and memories in a slower way, by sewing together aspects of our culture. The precision and process of needlework, to me, mimics the flow of time. Piecing together each piece of thin black thread by weaving them together and breaking and re-linking them reflects the continuity of the thread of life. Each line that I make represents a story that builds atop of another. Every motion records my life and my emotions; these lines are like the lines that connect people and memories to one another. As time goes by and our bodies move, they become thicker and deeper.

—Yim Yen Sum, Artist, 2021

THRESHOLD OF

MEMOIRS

Yim Yen Sum’s textile and fabric works have explored issues connected to the notion of time and space, traversing themes from the discourse of urbanism, history, memory, to the social body. In Threshold of Memoirs , the artist revisits her sustained exploration of these themes and of her chosen medium. Her main entry point is the imagination of the home and building, and more specifically, her observation of the “window” as both an object and the threshold of social space.

Here, Yen Sum is interested in testing the expansion of these boundaries as pliable lines and connections. The window, the main visual object in the present series, represents one site in which the artist noticed the potential for lines to give way during the lockdown. In the artist’s observation, windows became focused spaces where people engaged with the outside world, or gates from which they longed to reach and to reconnect with their peers.

In her present installation, the windows are combined with forms of mountains, placing nature and the man-made in juxtaposition. The contrast is made evident by the use of gold thread to represent mountains, sewed against the black thread of her windows. Again, the pandemic has changed the way we connect to the environment: isolated in a concrete cube, we look outward to imagine more. Interestingly, by choosing a transparent material for her fabric, Yen Sum also challenges the perception of walls as concrete forms as something more open and engaging. The transparency invites the potential for open boundaries.

Such conversations look to other important frameworks that recur across the artist’s oeuvre, namely the associations of womanhood

and femininity weaved into her fabric works. Yen Sum’s interest in working with fabric drew from her fascination in traditional art forms relating to fluidity and continuity. Yen Sum displays her works as a stretched version of a long handscroll embroidery of windows and mountains surrounding all the walls of the gallery space, both of which have resonance as recurring metaphors in traditional Chinese paintings, with narratives of home and memories.

The performative aspect of Yen Sum’s process will be on show during the exhibition, where Yen Sum will conduct a silent sewing performance in the gallery space. The artist’s performance lays bare the artist’s memories and emotions; she builds a silent dialogue between herself and the audience to show how the process from a single thread slowly layers to become a window then another. In this way, the artist seems to perform the process of a growing life form, beginning with a single cell that slowly becomes an embryo, which then becomes a person, and then through networking finally evolves into a society.

Alia Swastika, Curator , 2021

Alia Swastika is a curator and writer based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She is now Director of Biennale Jogja Foundation, where she served for curator in previous editions. In 2007–2018 she was the Program Director for Ark Galerie in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, then she transformed the platform to a farming and studio based residency in a village in Yogyakarta.

Line of Connection

2020

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze 16 × 1279 cm

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

× 1279 cm

Threshold of Memoirs series

2021–ongoing

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

Dimension variable

Threshold of Memoirs series

2021–ongoing

Gauze dyed in acrylic, embroidery on gauze

Dimension variable

Artist Profile

Yim Yen Sum (b. 1987, Malaysia) received her diploma in Fine Art from Dasein Academy of Art in 2008. She predominantly works with textiles to create ever-evolving installations that often explore the relationships and interconnectivity between us as a society, our practices and interactions with our environment. Yim’s practice entails hours of incredibly delicate needlework, using units of gauze that have undergone a process of manipulation, including screen printing and appliqué. Yim has participated in exhibitions locally (National Art Gallery, 2017) and internationally (Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan, 2017; The Pier-2 Art Center, Taiwan, 2016; Biennale Jogja XV Equator, 2019; Gravity Art Space, Philippines, 2021; Art Moments Jakarta, 2021. Yim is the recipient of UOB Painting of The Year Award in 2016, and recently participated in Biennale Jogja XV Equator, 2019.

EDUCATION

2006–2008

• Diploma in Fine Arts, Dasein Academy of Art, Malaysia

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2021 • Threshold of Memoirs , A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur.

2018 • The further you stand, the clearer you see , Wei-ling Contemporary Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2017 • Trace of the city (Hakata) - The people I met , Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan

2016 • Way of Seeing , The Pier-2 Art Center, GaoXiong, Taiwan

BINNIALS, TRIENNIALS AND ART FAIRS

2021 • No Vacancy , CIMB ARTOBER, Element Kuala Lumpur.

• Biennale Jogja XVI Equator #6, Taman Budaya Yogyakarta.

2019 • Biennale Jogja XV Equator #5, Jogja National Museum, Indonesia.

2018 • UOB Art space Art Stage Singapore, Marina Bay Sands, Sands Expo & Convention Centre.

2017 • Alami Belas Be Loved, KL Biennale, National Art Gallery, Malaysia.

2016 • Artexpo Malaysia, MATRADE Exhibition & Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur.

2015 • New Art Wave Expo, Costi Expo Venetian, Macau.

2014 • Artexpo Malaysia -Breaking Down The Wall , MATRADE Exhibition & Convention Centre.

2017

• Through Rose-Tinted Glasses , Wei-Ling Contemporary, Malaysia

• Di Mana(where are) young , National Art Gallery, Malaysia

• Floating Island - Contemporary Female Trio Exhibition , Jing Lv Art, Taipei, Taiwan

• Young Gun Award Exhibition by HOM Art Trans , White Box, Publika, Kuala Lumpur

2016 • ♀ ,HOM Art Trans, Ampang, Malaysia

• Art Mart International Group Exhibition, Khajuraho, India.

• Approaching the Age - Art Beat , In Live Art Space, Taipei, Taiwan

2015 • Extreme Portrail part II, Chandan Gallery, Publika, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• The Grass Is Greener on This Side , Core Design. Kuala Lumpur.

PUBLIC PROJECT

2016 PublikArt , Iskandar Putri, Johor DahrulTa’zim, Malaysia.

2011 Multiplicity , Wei-ling gallery, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

2010 Pudu Art Festival – Bangun Project , Lost Generation, Pudu, Malaysia.

ARTIST RESIDENCY

2019 Residensi Kelana Darat- Sungai, Indonesia.

2017 Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Residency program, Japan.

2015 Pier-2 Art Center Artist Residence Program, Taiwan.

2015 Eco Art incubating International Artist Residency, Korea.

2014 Sasaran International Residency, Malaysia.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2021 • Art Moments Jakarta Online, CAN’S Gallery, Jakarta.

• Errant Life, Promiscuous Form , Gravity Art Space, Manila.

2014

• CATALYSIS: Contemporary Art by Dasein Graduates , HOM Art Trans, Ampang, Malaysia

2020

• Ready but Postponed or Cancelled , A+ Works of Art Gallery, Malaysia.

• Back to Art , A+ Works of Art, Malaysia.

2019 • A Preferred , A+ Works of Art, Malaysia.

• Transience and Transformation , A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• Victress Niche , G13 Gallery, Malaysia

2018 • Immaterial-A compilation of the unconventionals , G13 Gallery, Malaysia

• The Young Contempo Showcase II , Gallery Prima, Malaysia

• Charity, Art and Design against Cancer organized by National Cancer Society Malaysia (NCSM)

2013 • Malaysia Young Contemporary Competition- Finalist Exhibition, National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2012 • Precious Little Pieces , Weiling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• A Decade of Collecting-Bright Young Things , Weiling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• 18&8 KUL-SIN Exhibition, ION Art Singapore.

AWARDS

2017 Young Gun Award by HOM Art Trans

2016 United Overseas Bank(UOB) Painting of the Year Award.

2014 Jury Award in Malaysia Young Contemporary Art Competition.

2009 Mix Media First Prize in Tanjung Herritage Art Competition.

Yim Yen Sum and A+ WORKS of ART, would like to thank the following individuals for their support and contribution to this publication and exhibition:

The artist parents and her family

Chua Chong Yong

Oliver Ng

Artist

Yim Yen Sum

Curator

Alia Swastika

Editor

Aminah Ibrahim

Denise Lai

Photography

Damien Khoo

Design

Kenta.Works

Published in conjunction with Threshold of Memoirs, a solo exhibition by Yim Yen Sum, curated by Alia Swastika. Held at A+ WORKS of ART, Kuala Lumpur, from 12th to 31st December 2021.

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

Facebook/Instagram @aplusart.asia

Copyright © 2021

Yim Yen Sum and A+ WORKS of ART. All rights reserved.

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.

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.