The blue lotus 3

Lotus

Issue 3 Summer 2016

The Blue

Arts Magazine

Ketna Patel Joel Cristobal Shadow Play Puppetry Eric Choong Nicholas Choong Kartika Affandi Zheng Yuande Jessica Volpe 1

Lotus The Blue

Arts Magazine

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“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.�

Rabindrnath Tagore

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Summer 2016

inside....

6 Editorial

Thoughts on the current issue

by the Founding Editor

16 Asia Pop

Ketna Patel 26 Shock of the New

National Gallery Singapore review

36 Joel Cristobal

Philippine Painter

54 Eternal Champions

Reviving Shadow Play Puppetry

56 Lost and Found Gallery Review

68 The Journey and Beyond

Community Pharmacy in Malaysia, book signing

76 Eric Choong

Fashion Designs

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92 Kartika

Dr Christopher Basile 102 Kartika Affandi

Dr Astri Wright 108 Love Me In My Batik

Batik exhibition gallery review

124 Zheng Yuande

Charcoal drawings

136 Nicholas Choong

Graphically

150 Jessica Volpe

Sur Réalité

162 Going Bananas about Bananas

Food review

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The Blue Lotus Arts Magazine Summer 2016 Editor: Martin A Bradley

email: martinabradley@gmail.com TBL TM Published June 2016 cover: Freedom by Eric Choong

Lotus The Blue

Arts Magazine

Welcome to the

The Blue Lotus Arts Magazine.

With this issue we saunter through the Summer of 2016, continuing to bring the best from Asia to a waiting, anticipating world, and the world, or at least some of it, back to Asia.

Herein combines established and establishing artists and designers, Asian and Western, from the Britain/India via Africa, US of A, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. Subjects vary from Asian Pop Art to Malayan tigers, intriguing sculptures, exciting new Malaysian fashion design and a fresh look at traditional Asian puppetry. Gallery reviews look at a retrospective of batik painting and the brand new National Gallery Singapore.

The next issue (Autumn) will exclusively feature Lombardy (Italy), and Catalonia (Spain), until then....

The Blue Lotus is a platform for international cooperation, aiming to bring creative Asia to the world, and the creative world to Asia.

Now read on

Martin Bradley (Founding Editor).

The Blue Lotus Arts Magazine is an entirely free and non-associated publication concerned with bringing Asia to the world, and the world to Asia

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Malaysian artist Honey Khor

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‘Perfect weddings’

the new release by bestselling author Lynda Renham.

Every bride wants a perfect wedding and that includes Georgina Winters.

Amy Perfect is the crème de la crème of wedding planners so who best to plan Georgina s wedding... except the man Georgina plans to marry is the same man who jilted Amy three years ago. Will her plan to give Georgina the most imperfect wedding backfire on her? Is this the chance for Amy to win back the love of her life, or will insufferable Ben Garret put a spanner in the works? Arab princes, spoilt brides and wedding catastrophes make Perfect Weddings a page-turning romantic comedy that will keep you guessing until the very last page.

Out now on Amazon http://goo.gl/Vp78vS

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Italy

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ASIA

PoP Ketna Patel

From

the often overwhelming Japanese PoP Art of Takashi Murakami to the correctly political images of China’s Wang Guangyi, Pop Art in Asia has either mimicked the likes of 60s darlings Andy Warhol and Roy Liechtenstein/Jeff Koons or the manga much of its images hails from.

During the 1960s, Japanese PoP artists Tadanori Yokoo and Yayoi Kusama frequently stole the limelight from their American cousins with their innovative authentic imagery. There is refreshed interest in their works in the 2000s. The concept of Japanese PoP Art has been seen to evolve, or is that devolve, into a hastily branded Neo PoP Art, inclusive of Megumi Igarashi (aka Rokudenashiko) who recently was cleared of charges of obscenity for making plastic figurines of her vulva, replete with fake fur.

China has seemed to be content with reimagining Andy Warhol’s work on the one hand, ala Wang Guangyi and his melding of Chinese Cultural Revolution 16

Pipe Dreams

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Aina Mahal

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The Last Asian Supper

The Fall of Venus

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imagery with popular brands such as BMW and Marlboro, and the frequently twee productions by the Luo Brothers (Luo Weidong and Luo Weiguo) including “Welcome to the World’s Famous Brands”.

While it is hard to compete with the already popular, kitsch and often camp imagery flooding the world from Mumbai’s Bollywood, some Indian artists, thought not so many actually from India, have tackled nuances of an Indian PoP Art. Malaysian artist Rajinder Singh, now residing jointly in London and Ireland, produced an exciting series of PoP influenced imagery. Taking his own childhood in Malaysia as his starting point, Singh worked on textured, weathered surfaces, with layers of paint onto stretched, heat protected, unprimed canvas, working into this with solvents and acid to produce texturing.

Another concept of Indian PoP Art had been muted with Canadian Indian Sanjay Patel’s Asian Art Museum (San Francisco) artworks.

In reality Mr Patel’s work appeared to have less in common with PoP Art than they did with the simple lines of digital vector art and 1950s advertising illustration.

Taking in the modern branding nightmare which is Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola’s modern India another Patel, this time Ketna Patel brings us the real deal with her South and South East Asia take on ‘Asia PoP Art’.

Being Desi, or of Indian diaspora, Patel is of Gujararati descent and originally hailed from Kenyan Africa. While still young she was sent to England, eventually studying architecture, then spent two decades creating in Singapore before deciding to change bases to Britain and India. It made perfect sense. She had just about plundered all she could of the very public images, icons and symbols of multicultural Singapore, from the Hindi Bollywood film ‘Bobby’, incidentally also sampled by Malaysian Zulkifli Yusoff during his PoP Art phase (2008), to images of both Gandhi and Mao. With reminiscences of Eduardo Paolozzi’s early (1949) British PoP Art, Patel’s works have drawn very heavily on street signs, publicly available imagery, posters and text in varying languages, juxtaposed, re-imagined and arranged to either destroy or enhance meaning and symbolism. Again like Paolozzi, or perhaps Picasso’s ‘Synthetic Cubism’ or Tristan Tzara’s and Max Ernst’s teasing with collages, Patel collects and uses advertising material to subsume into her works. She was quoted in The Times of India as remarking “It’s a kind of storytelling through Asia’s streets” (article by Neelam Raj). But I suspect a dab, a mere hint of 60s psychedelia too. Shades of the Americans Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly perhaps, or Michael English/Hapshash and The Coloured Coat maybe.

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Bobby

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Selling London by the Pound

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Trishaw

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Asia PoP Furniture

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The Shock of the New

By Martin Bradley

(With all due respect to the late Australian Art Critic Robert Hughes.)

In this case the 'new' is both ‘old’ and ‘new’.

The 'new' National Gallery Singapore was opened on 24 November 2015, and is housed in the former 'old' Singapore City Hall and Supreme Court buildings, originally designed by Frank Dorrington Ward between 1937 and 1939. Those buildings stand in front of the historical Padang grounds (playing fields) in Singapore.

The new National Gallery Singapore was designed by JeanFrançois Milou of StudioMilou and represents an amalgam of those preserved Colonial buildings in the heart of art Singapore.

Of course there are contemporary architectural nuances, curtesy of StudioMilou and their local consultants (CPG Consultants), replete with a sculptural entrance sheltered by a curving canopy made from gold filigree metal and glass which hangs over the entrance and a glass and metal roof structure supported by an avenue of architectural ‘trees’. The buildings feature ionicstyle columns, an oxidised copper tower and pale grey stonework, while the new galleries attempt to give insights into South East Asian Contemporary and Modern Art. The Gallery's website offers this insight.

“National Gallery Singapore is a new visual arts institution which 26

National Gallery Singapore

oversees the largest public collection of modern art in Singapore and Southeast Asia. The Gallery is housed in two national monuments—former Supreme Court and City Hall—that have been beautifully restored and transformed into this exciting venue in the heart of the Civic District.

Reflecting Singapore’s unique heritage and geographical location, the Gallery will feature Singapore and Southeast Asian art in its long-term and special exhibitions. It will also work with leading museums worldwide to co-present Southeast Asian art in a wider context, positioning Singapore as a regional and international hub for the visual arts.”

I arrived on Wednesday, by taxi, at the Coleman Street entrance, to a distinct lack of signage. At that moment the most vital piece of information was, where in this new art Gallery is the loo. The Ladies was quite convenient, a hop and step away to the right. The Gents, however, was a long convoluted trek past the minimalist merchandising area, past Galley & Co, around the back of the Keppel Centre for Art Education and along past lifts and grey slate walls to yet another Ladies without an art poster, banner or adult piece of art to be seen anywhere along the circuitous route. I had to backtrack slightly to notice the minimalist male figure, barely noticeable from the surrounding walls. It was a good loo, but it wasn't a good start.

Gallery & Co was a cafe, of sorts. The counter area was minimalist, as were the dubious delights on offer. I opted for a canned fruit drink, sat and used the WIFI to download the National Gallery Ap. It installed quite quickly, but was little help. I guess that I had expected something like Waze to guide me around. The Ap. didn’t.

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Former Supreme Court Terrace by Darren Soh

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The (no doubt) ingenious design of the combined Colonial buildings was entirely lost on me as I struggled to find where the art gallery actually was. At this point a large sign saying WELCOME TO SINGAPORE’S NATIONAL GALLERY would have helped, with maybe a painting or two just to emphasise the fact that we all were, in fact, within an art gallery. Even the Gallery Map depicts the fusion of architecture on the cover, rather than a painting, and the mini brochure National Gallery Singapore At A Glance has the domed Supreme Court on the cover. Art enters only on page two, with a minute image of Lui Kang, ‘Life by the River’, 1975 being dominated by a huge photograph of yet another architectural feature of the new Gallery (pages one and two).

Exiting the cafe and merchandising area (Gallery & Co.) I was confronted by a huge hall of emptiness (on two levels no less) with not an artwork in sight. I wanted to be informed. I wanted to be wowed, I wanted to have my breath taken away, not by the architecture but by the content of the Gallery. I was quickly realising that I was entering hallowed halls where artworks were sacred objects, to be hidden way and revered. While the architecture was both Colonial and contemporary, the Gallery’s approach to museology seemed staid, archaic. We were back to the days of reverential silence, with the curator as high priest.

I sidled over to join the queue for tickets. It turned out to be a queue for information, tickets ($20, concession $15) were down the escalator. The understated signage, while being sleek contemporary and very designerish, was beginning to get bloody irritating. And that, I am afraid, was my overall first impression of this freshly constructed Singaporean behemoth - enormous, empty and uncommunicative, with a huge sense of Alice’s tumble. I wondered, and started to look for the White Rabbit.

Tumbling down the escalator, metaphorically not physically, eventually I landed at the Earthwork (1979) exhibition, by Tang Da Wu. And a most impressive beginning it was too. I stumbled into other galleries wrapped by grandiose law accoutrements, majestic polished wood, magisterial chair, antique cases containing some history of the region. But any learning was minimised by the sheer 30

City Hall Foyer by Darren Soh

Padang Atrium by Darren Soh

weight of that wood. It seemed that the ancient wood had as much power as the contemporary glass and metal, enough to wrench any glory from mere pictorial art.

Only ‘Beauty Beyond Form’, an exhibition of Wu Guanzhong’s works, was able to stand up to that crushing weight of architecture.

In 2013, I had seen some of those works, at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM, opened 1996), in a showing called ‘Seeing the Kite Again’ but it is always a joy to see them again.

Like most national museums or national galleries, it is inadvisable to attempt to see everything in one shot, foolish in fact to think that you can. I left off with much more to see, than had been seen.

That evening, an American Surrealist friend (living in Singapore) had asked me, over a most refreshing Mint Berry Gin Fizz (Gin, Creme de Cassis, Pressed Lemon) in Dempsey House, Dempsey Road, just what I had thought of the new National Gallery and, before I could answer, he chipped in "underwhelming?", and he was right for so many reasons. I could have retorted no! Not underwhelming! But overwhelming if we are talking about the architecture, but held back to listen to his opinion.

Not really wanting to compare the gargantuan new National Art Gallery with Singapore’s contemporary art museum, SAM, which is just about right in size and approach; however, it is difficult to imagine the need for such a large space as the National Gallery for Singaporean art when there is so little of it. At best you might claim just over 100 years of art making in Singapore, hardly enough to constantly fill such a huge space with rotating artworks and, of course, if not rotated, staid.

While SAM remains somewhat romantic and accessible, the new Gallery makes the same mistake as many major institutions.

First impressions (which are usually those you remember most) are that the National Gallery is more concerned with its own impressiveness than it is with visitor communication. It produces large spaces to show how powerful the institution is, minimalist signage and lack of posters/banners which emphasises not the artistic merits of works housed there but, once again, the Colonial and Contemporary architecture. SAM holds that delicate balance 31

Earthwork 1979 by Darren Soh

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Earthwork 1979 by Darren Soh

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of conservation, preservation and visitor contentment. To date the National Gallery fails in all but its concentration on architecture.

The fresh visitor to any gallery or museum needs to be informed from the outset where they are, what there is on offer and how to get to see it. The National Gallery, London, elects to drape long banners to remind you where you are, just in case you missed the text outside. The Scottish National Gallery, in its present incarnation, has something similar telling what it is and what to expect. It is a pity, for the National Gallery, Singapore has some outstanding contributions to museology including the Crossing Cultural Boundaries gallery, but these gems are not advertised as the visitor walks in, especially through the Coleman Street entrance - visitors arriving by taxi or from parking their cars. Too much attention had been paid to architecture and not enough to signage, to assist the visitors who currently pay $20 for the privilege of being confused.

I can understand that if what we now see is only a beginning.

There is plenty of room for the National Gallery, Singapore, to grow, as grow it must. But there is the feeling that the doors were opened too far in advance and that the Gallery needed a test run before opening to the public. As of my visit, a week hence, and some four months since its opening, the National Gallery, Singapore remains somewhat bipolar, architecture vs visual art. At the moment architecture draws the visitors, but does not sustain enough interest to pull visitors into the environment and lead them through the various galleries, as interesting as they may be. It was a brave idea, but needing a tad more thought. Meanwhile, I shall always visit SAM, a more homogeneous environment.

Nota Bene Why, in its South East Asian inclusiveness of Burma, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and of course Singapore, does Cambodia get excluded.

Just a thought.

Plus…….

On the label to Victorio C Edades, Galo B Ocampo and Carlos “Botong” Franciso (b.1895-d.1985, b. 1913-d. 1983, b. 1912-d. 1969; Philippines) Mother Nature’s Bounty Harvest 1935 Oil on Canvas There is the inscription “….Sinuous, asymmetrical lines reflect the artists’ interest in Art Nouveau.”

Its a small point but shouldn’t that be Art Deco. A style that was rife in Manila and Bandung during the 1930s. Also no mention is made of the influence of the Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera, whose style the picture clearly emulates.

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Wu Guanzhong Gallery by Darren Soh

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Joel Cristobal

Bountiful Harvest

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Philippine Painter

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Joseph Joel V. Cristobal ( Joel Cristobal) who bears the same surname as one of the Philippines modern artists - Bonifacio Nicolas Cristobal, before becoming a painter, was troubadour, a travelling musician.

His music brought him to Palau and Malaysia in the 1990’s. His exposure to art sketching in Selangor, Malaysia, made such a lasting impression that upon his return to the Philippines, from his adventures overseas, he pursued his love of painting. Cristobal joined a group of artists in Morong, in Rizal province, the Philippines, and hasn’t looked back.

Cristobal nurtured his artistic skills through hard work and friendships with other artists in his town in Baras, Rizal, the Philippines. It was, however, his encounter with the Cebuano artists that he further developed his passion for painting. His companionship with Cebuano artists, especially artists such as Celso Pepito (a fellow Philippine ‘cubist’ painter) who gave him the opportunity to reveal his art to Cebu as well as exhibits organised by Cebu Artists Incorporated, later Mission Artists Philippines and KITA (in Cebu). These relationships solidified his place as a member of the Philippine group of artists.

Joel was privileged to paint the mural in the lobby of Veterans Memorial Hospital in Quezon City. He also joins other exhibits in Manila organised by other art groups. He was part of the Cebuano artists who joined the ArtMalaysia Art Tourism Fair in Viva Home Shopping Mall in Kuala Lumpur last year. He also took part in the last exhibit of the group in 2013, ‘Bridging Cultures’ in Kluang Mall, in Kluang, Johor, Malaysia and KITA, on Cebu, in 2015.

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Unity on the Fields

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Guitarman

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Lefthanded

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Yellow Fields

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Month of May

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Bulik

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Flowers of May

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Haircut

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Mangoes

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Swahili Chronicles — a journey to the heart of Tanzania

I have been travelling to Tanzania frequently over a period of fifteen years. Usually for no more than one month at a time.

This last journey was different — I chose to disappear and do my own thing for three months. You may well ask, “Why?” So many people have questions about Africa, yet have never been there.

“Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Won’t you get ill?”

“Isn’t everyone out to cheat you?” “They’re all starving, aren’t they?”

Or they give you platitudes.

“Oh, you’re so brave!”

“I couldn’t do what you do!”

You shall find my response in this collection of short stories, poetry and photographs.

Mark Walker

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The journey starts in Pangani, a small village on the Swahili coast of Tanzania.

These are my thoughts.

It is early evening, just before sundown, and the cool sea air envelopes the street, save for a few homes lucky enough to have generators or main power.

Yet, as I walk back from the beach and I listen to the waves crashing on the shore, my friends and I also hear the delightful laughter and childhood happiness of kids playing in the street.

“Mzungu, mzungu,” they cry... or perhaps, “Shikamoo,” the Swahili greeting of respect to the elders.

One small boy plays in the gutter right next to the red earth road and the shop selling essentials of the day.

All this is done in the shadow of a small solar lamp outside an old ramshackle house.

But I ask you, is this POVERTY? I don’t think so.

I think it is part of a rich childhood.

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Eternal Ch Malaysian contemporary Shadow Play Puppets

by Martin Bradley

et

Traditional Shadow Pupp

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.�

Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces 54

hampions

Darth Vader

From traditional Ramayana to Star Wars Darth Vader the battle of good against evil continues in Shadow Play

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Puppet Making

Whether we look to the Greek philosopher Plato’s allegory of The Cave (somewhere between 380 and 360 B.C), or to an ancient Chinese ghost story (960—1280 A.D.), or yet again to the nomadic Mongolian tribes who were said to worship flat felt figures as the origin of Shadow Play Theatre, there is no doubt that this form of puppetry is remarkably ancient.

Some hint that Shadow Play puppetry, which denotes stories of Indian epics such as Mahabharata and Ramayana, developed in the 'Indianised' states of Southeast Asia. Evidence of India’s connection with these places is witnessed in temple cities such as Pagan (Burma; 1044 to 1287 AD,) Angkor (Cambodia; 889 to c.

1300 AD), and Borobudur ( Java, early ninth century AD).

The earliest Shadow Play puppetry records in Java (copper plates dated 840 and 907 A.D.) indicate that Indonesian Shadow Play (wayang kulit) grew from its connection to India (and Hinduism) from the first century A.D. onwards, including the kingdom of Kalingga (6th century) and up to the The Majapahit Empire (1293 56

Creating Darth Vader

to 1500 A.D.) The neighbouring Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, all too developed Shadow play theatre.

While Indonesia, with assistance from UNESCO, has made inroads to protect its traditional Wayang Puppet Theatre through a National Action Plan (for the Safeguarding of the Wayang Puppet Theatre of Indonesia, via the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity), unfortunately Malaysia has held objections to the Hindu nature of the puppetry.

Islamic rulers from the PAS religious and political party in Kelantan state, Malaysia, had banned the traditional Wayang Kulit, in 1990, as the original Shadow Play stories had derived from ancient Hindu epics. Those stories were considered to be un-Islamic and at odds with the PAS party’s concept of monotheism. These views virtually destroyed a craft of traditional Wayang (Shadow) Kulit (skin) puppetry in Malaysia, which used to draw crowds of up to 800 people a night. The ban was finally lifted when Wayang Kulit became “modernised” and shied away from its Indian/Hindu 57

The New Shadow Puppet Heroes

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roots, to instead relate Malay stories and legends.

With concern for waning traditional local culture, and wanting to bring Wayang Kulit bang up to date in Malaysia, the Fusion Wayang Kulit team of designer and art director Tintoy (Yuan Ping) Chuo and Teh Take Huat have reworked ancient stories and injected popular American (Hollywood) culture into the mix. Their take on Wayang Kulit includes stories of Batman, Superman, other DC characters and characters from the Star Wars films too.

The dream began in 2012, at a Designers Weekend Exhibition, at Publika, in Malaysia. Two years later, when interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Tintoy (a professional digital game character designer) mentioned "I'm trying to combine the traditional with the high-tech to find a unique way to preserve Malaysian culture… …I myself sometimes find shadow play too long and boring. But this is something cool that young people can relate to. Even my mom knows 'Star Wars.”

With the aid of a traditional Wayang Kulit Shadow Play puppeteer/puppet maker, Muhammad Dain bin Othman (aka Pak Dain), and also known as a Shadow Play (Tok Dalang) ’Master’, the Fusion Wayang Kulit team were able to help keep a dying art alive, and to make their vision come true with actual puppets fashioned from buffalo hide, crafted by a master craftsman with his small team.

In an Asian Review interview (2015) Chuo said "The more I learned, the more I felt this responsibility to do something to popularise the shadow play among the younger generation”. The idea took off. Fusion Wayang Kulit puppets perform and are exhibited throughout Malaysia and Singapore, in galleries and malls.

Photos curtesy of Fusion Wayang Kulit, Arthur Pang; Johnathan Cooi; Gloria Kurnik; Leong Kean Hong; Take Huat and Tommy Lim KW.

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Gurney Paragon Mall, Penang, Malaysia

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Superman as Wayang Kulit Figure

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Shadow of Change

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Fadillah Karim Fragile Spinc

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Lost & Found Wayward in Publika

by Martin Bradley

A couple of days ago I took my artist and gallery consultant wife and her Cambodian gallery manager friend to Publika. We were looking for Galleri Chandan. As usual and despite, or was that because of, using Google Maps we, once again, got lost. Publika, in Solaris Dutamas, is not the most user friendly environment to navigate. I have been lost there more times than I can count.

Needless to say we didn’t find Galleri Chandan. Like many galleries at Publika, Galleri Chandan bears a distinct resemblance to Howl’s Moving Castle, insomuch as it never seems to be where you think it will be. But we did find Segaris Art Center. It was a gallery new to us, and therefore exciting because of that. The gallery was spacious, pleasantly laid out and, as it was a joint show, exciting in its diversity.

Jamil Zakaria|, Kambing Import (Kambing Hitam) On show was a wide variety of mediums from fairly traditional figure painting by Fadillah Karim, looking a little like Marvin Chan’s work, but all the better for that, to Jamil Zakaria’s Steel Wire (or is that steel wool) and wood constructed Kambing Import (Kambing Hitam). The later had resonance of the 2006 New Zealand black comedic film also called Black Sheep. Stand Up Comedian by Zaim Durulaman was another striking figurative piece, this time acrylic on jute, but I couldn’t help think that we had been there before.

It was nice to see the artists playing with other mediums, if only to prove that painting still has a lot to offer in this 21st century.

Zairin Anwar’s two rubber tube, valve, acrylic and pin hole steel constructions, called Hunny & Bunny & Insecttoid Series ’16’ were intriguing and reminded me of puppets once used by British puppeteers Faulty Optic, in their bizarrely surreal shows, or something that Czech film maker Jan Švankmajer might have created for one of his surreal animated films.

Anwar Suhaimi’s Nothing, constructed from an acrylic sheet through fascinating shadows onto the wall. I would like to have seen more of these, and bigger. Shahrul Hisham, with a ratty piece drawn with ball pen on canvas (no name) reminded we visitors on the strength of good drawing skills, and Haris Abadi’s Cosmic Playground: Symmetrical Overdrive, a construct of LCD (TV) screen, metal and plastic leaves, brought digital video into the mix in a slightly unnerving video sequence where a young girl slowly disappears and constantly reappears from a playground swing seemingly portraying the menace of child abduction, and loss of 65

Fazli Othman Menternak Kerbau di Pangsapuri

Haris Abadi Cosmic Playground: Symmetrical Overdrive

innocence.

Haris Abadi, Cosmic Playground: Symmetrical Overdrive There was a lot to see, and take in. The staff at Segaris were friendly, but not intrusively so. My main thought was, how could I have missed this gallery! We arrived back home with very warm thoughts of the gallery and exhibits. I wanted to learn more about this gallery I had overlooked. I dashed off an email to gain more information. While I awaited a response, I Googled around the internet, finding a Facebook page and a Blog. Neither told me when the gallery had opened, nor who was instrumental in its planning, other than in some way it belonged to UiTM (that is Malaysia’s Universiti Teknologi MARA).

An e-catalogue (PDF), kindly sent by a Galley Assistant, provided the necessary images for this piece, but was devoid of any textual information. I shot off another email, “Thank you so much for the material you have already sent, and thank you for your time.

I was rather hoping to learn a little about how the gallery came about, who were the instigators and when the gallery first opened, those sort of details.

I think that it is an exciting idea, and wish to learn more so that I can write a balanced piece about my experience there.”

I was directed to the on-line sites which I had already perused.

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Zairin Anwar Hunny & Bunny #Insecttoid Series ‘16’

And that is the reason that I have been unable, dear reader, to supply you with any background information about the Segaris Art Centre, not even what the name of the gallery represents.

All I can say is that the gallery may be found at Lot No. 8, Level G4, Publika Shopping Gallery, No. 1, Jalan Dutamas, Solaris Dutamas, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Good luck in finding it.

Shahrul Hisham

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....the signing 69

Martin Bradley signing the enlarged book cover

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Pharmacy

...A Malaysian History

Martin Bradley Signing Day

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Taking a break from his busy writing schedule, Martin Bradley (The Blue Lotus editor,) visited the Caring building to sign copies of his latest book - The Journey and Beyond. It is a much needed publication concerning a brief history of Malaysian pharmacy. The book had it official launch at the Malaysian Pharmaceutical Society.

“It was such an honour to be able to work on the book, and to be called to Caring for the official signing.” said Bradley.

Working alongside a dedicated team from Caring Pharmacy in Malaysia, Bradley researched and wrote a tentative history of Malaysian pharmacy, concentrating on the concept of Community Pharmacy from its earliest beginnings in Singapore and Malaya to the 21st century.

The idea was to produce “...a book aimed at students and those new to pharmacy. It had to be fun to read as well as being informative” said Bradley.

It took months of research and investigation, with Bradley liaising with the dedicated team from Caring. Old newspapers, documents and books were pored over for accuracy.

Many surprising details of Malaysia’s pharmacies were discovered but ‘off target’ and therefore never made the final edit of the book. Tales of adventurous pharmacists, their trials and tribulations were uncovered, their shocking deaths too.

One such story featured Penang’s Federal Dispensary (early 1900s) and its then manager, one Mr F.J.V.Guy. Mr Guy, as well as being the Dispensary manager, spent his time collecting and sporting live animals. It was a hobby which proved the death of him.

Hero of the 1909 Temple Affray, in which

four villains were gunned down by the police, Mr. Frederick John Vavasour Guy, Ph.C met an untimely end in Kelantan, Straits Settlements, 1910. He was accidentally shot during an affray with his own panther, after said panther refused to battle a water buffalo.

That was one intriguing story which made the pages of ‘The Journey”, but many did not.

Pharmacy connections with Malaysian war hero Sybil Medan Kathigasu (Perak) and Chinese/Flemish writer Han Suyin ( Johor) fell into the tome’s gutters. The book’s focus had to be on Community Pharmacy and any subject, no matter how fascinating, was put aside if it was irrelevant to the story of Community Pharmacy.

Caring opened up its photo files. With images from them and others gleaned in the research, it was possible to give some notion of the growth of Community Pharmacy in the Straits Settlements, in Malaya, Singapore and in Malaysia.

“Writing ‘The Journey’, was a journey in itself.“ said Bradley. “A journey not just into the annals of pharmacy but into the very history of the country (Malaysia). It was a most exciting time, digging through archives and always learning as I went”.

Martin Bradley, born in London, is also the author of Buffalo & Breadfruit (travelogue); A Story of Colors of Cambodia (travelogue);Uniquely Toro (artist biography) and his first book of poetry - Remembering Whiteness, and countless published art articles and short stories.

Bradley has been editing first Dusun, then Dusun Quarterly and now The Blue Lotus magazine for over five years.

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Vinita Agrawal

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ERIC CHOONG

Freedom by Eric Choong Capsule Menswear Collections 2016 - campaign images special thanks to celebrity model John Tan make up -Diva Productions hair - Juno Ko photographer - Ryan Chiu

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fashion designer

Malaysian Fashion Designer Eric Choong

The highly successful Malaysian fashion designer, Eric Choong, graduated from the Hong Kong Institute of Fashion Design in 1986, and honed his design and tailoring skills in Hong Kong before returning to Kuala Lumpur, in 1990, to start the Eric Choong label.

Based on his own philosophy, that fashion should be an expression of individual style and personality, Choong’s label quickly gained a reputation among the fashion set for its impressive creations which have transcended fads with their seemingly timeless beauty.

He broke new ground with integrating Malaysian cultural influences into his sophisticated designs, and encouraged by the success of his eponymous label, Choong ventured into bespoke bridal wear. Eric Choong Bridal became a natural extension when his clients had started requesting he design their bridal trousseaus.

Choong’s penchant for the extravagant and luxurious translated into breathtaking wedding gowns, sealing his reputation as a leading bridalwear designer in Malaysia.

The Corporate Attire label followed in more recent years, including the newly minted menswear label Freedom by Eric Choong, stemming from his desire to extend similar standards of fashion design to a wider group.

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Freedom by Eric Choong, is a readyto-wear menswear line by Malaysian fashion designer Eric Choong, in collaboration with F.M.S (Freedom Men’s Style

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Freedom by Eric Choong,

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Eric Choong

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There are Batik influences

from Thailand , Indonesia ,

India , Cambodia and Vietnam .

I’m also inspired

by Wayang KulitÂ

( Shadow Play ) , which I interpreted

as motifs and prints on the clothes.

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BATIK

Eric Choong overseeing Batik in Thailand

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Freedom by Eric Choong Capsule Menswear Collections 2016 - campaign images special thanks to celebrity model John Tan make up -Diva Productions hair - Juno Ko photographer - Ryan Chiu

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Vietnam Fashion Week

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Kuala Lumpur

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Fashion Week

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Kartika Affandi in from of a nude painting of her by Dyan Anggaini

Kartika Kartika Affandi (Koberl) Nakedness, Nudity

by Dr. Christopher Basile

Kartika Affandi was born on November, 27th, 1934 in Jakarta. She is Affandi’s daughter from his first wife, Maryati. Her educational journey started from Taman Dewasa in Taman Siswa Jakarta, then she studied art at the University of Tagore Shantiniketan India. She also learnt about sculpting at the Polytechnic School of Art London. In 1952, Saptohoedojo married her and they have eight children. In 1957, she joined a painting exhibition with other woman painters in Yogyakarta for the first time.

In 1980 she went to Vienna, Austria to study at the Academy of Fine Arts majoring in Mechanical Preservation and Restoration of art objects, then she continued studying at ICCROM (International Center of the Preservation and the Restoration of Cultural Property) in Rome Italy. Nowadays, Kartika’s paintings and sculptures are also exhibited in Affandi Museum, in the third Gallery.

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Kartika Painting

In 1978 I read a collection of art historian Kenneth Clarke’s 1950s lectures, and the one on “The Naked and the Nude” left a lasting impression on me. As I recall, he delineates the two concepts in terms of whether or not they were voluntary: someone in extreme poverty or forcibly stripped of their garments is ‘naked,’ while ‘nude’ describes a person who chooses to be in a state of undress.

Kartika is not shy about nudity or nakedness in her work, though her depiction of the ‘naked’ is about revealing a kind of forced psychological or spiritual exposure rather than someone bereft of clothing, and her ‘nudes’ never try to convey – at least in my view – the body as a mere aesthetic object, but more as a natural part of life that the artist and the subject collaboratively celebrate.

The nude portraits of Kartika pictured here are by the painter Dyan Anggaini, a talented and important figure in the Yogyakarta arts scene, and they have never been exhibited. The Indonesian attitude to nudity and nakedness is complex and varied. On the one hand, I have seen mentally ill persons walking crowded city streets completely naked, seemingly invisible to passers-by, and as recently as 25 years ago it was not unusual to see nude Balinese bathing al fresco in rivers and irrigation streams (though it was impolite to look).

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Kartika Affandi phallic Statues

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Kartika’s ‘re-birth’

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Kartika Affandi laying nude by Dyan Anggaini (detail)

Kartika Affandi sitting nude by Dyan Anggaini

On the other hand, Indonesian public standards of acceptable body-exposure in dress, at the beach, and in art and other media, are far more conservative than in, for example, European or Englishspeaking countries, and this conservatism seems to be growing.

The increasing influence of the cultural ideals of Middle Eastern Islam in this predominantly Muslim country plays a big factor in this, certainly, but so does the increasingly pervasive presence of postmodern advertising and global media, with its depiction of the ‘’beautiful” body as an unattainable and taboo object of desire, a titillating commodity used to hawk products.

Kartika told me that Dyan asked to paint her nude portrait after an experience they shared. They were at a conference of female Indonesian artists in Bali, all living together in a dormitory, and spirits were high. Kartika came out of the bath and entered the dorm room wrapped in a towel, and asked who would like to go see a striptease. Everyone found the idea hilarious, but protested that there were no striptease clubs in Bali. So Kartika opened the towel and did a little dance to unanimous applause and laughter.

For the normally demure Indonesian wives and mothers in the dorm this was an outrageous and empowering moment - seeing this great-grandmother laughing and unselfconsciously displaying herself - and Dyan was inspired to paint two nude portraits of Kartika. In the portrait in which Kartika is seated, Dyan makes a visual reference in the background of the picture to a painting of Kartika’s in which she showed her father Affandi as a bright spirit among the sunflowers (itself a reference to a wonderful painting of Affandi’s in which he shows sunflowers in various stages of blossom and decay).

Kartika says she inherited her attitude about the body from her parents who were unfailingly open with her when she was growing up. Her mother Maryati was her father’s nude model, and they never hid this fact from Kartika. And when Kartika had her first child Helfi, Affandi painted himself nude holding his new grandchild, saying he thought it would be odd if he were depicted clothed in the painting when the baby was not.

One of Kartika’s paintings shows two nude females, with the genitalia of the reclining figure prominently exposed. When I first saw this painting displayed in her gallery in 2010, she was surprised when I asked her if the figures were her daughters, and she asked 97

why I imagined that. I explained that the depiction seemed compassionate to me, motherly rather than sexy or clinical. Returning to the gallery in 2015 the painting was no longer displayed, so I asked Kartika if she had sold it.

She explained that some visitors had complained about it, so she put it away in storage for a while. (I did not want to bother her to get it out that day, so I'll use the photomontage here which is credited to its creator - I'll get footage of the painting later.)

Kartika’s artistic vision can sometimes be powerful medicine for the staid, 21st century, art-consuming public. She had the idea of doing an exhibition of her work which viewers would enter by walking through a sculpture of a monumental vagina, which she conceived as symbolizing entering the artist’s inner world, and then, after experiencing the exhibition, they would exit the vagina sculpture in a kind of “rebirth.” But this idea met with little encouragement or approval – what would the neighbours think? – so she compromised by turning the piece on its side and it became a massive mouth.

Kartika told me she didn’t really know if a mouth was necessarily any more or less suggestive than a vagina, but it seemed to placate everybody, so she went along with it.

And then there are her totemic, sculptural representations of the penis, depicting the organ with a face and in various moods: as triumphant, exhausted, lonely, and so on. The statue showing two penis’s encoiled in a snakelike, loving embrace has been the object of the most outrage. She has never exhibited these works outside of her own private gallery.

Kartika’s ‘naked’ art is her most confronting and painful work.

In a self-portrait dating from a period when she felt overwhelmed by the pressures of being a dutiful daughter, mother and wife, her brain is exposed as her head is torn apart by pitiless, disembodied hands. In a painting celebrating her ‘re-birth’ after overcoming the trauma of a second failed marriage, she emerges naked in a cloud 98

Kartika Affandi female nude

Kartika Affandi with large sculpture

Kartika Affandi two female nudes

of blood from her own womb as a wizened and startled newborn.

When she realised that her legs were failing her in old age she says she feared that she was already half-dead, and she sculpted a bust depicting herself with half of her skull exposed.

In one of her most moving portraits of Affandi she created an almost overwhelmingly powerful image in which her father is both “nude’’ and “naked.” As Kartika recounts it, although he was overcome by illness and altzheimer’s disease and nearing death, Affandi was still determined to paint, but he lacked the strength to squeeze the pain tubes. He became frustrated and distraught, and in his heated confusion decided to remove his clothes. Kartika portrayed him in this state: as nude and innocent as an infant, yet simultaneously bereft and stripped naked by his infirmity, struggling to bare his soul through his art one last time, as his frail, exposed body is contorted in a final ‘dance of death.’ It is the naked emotion conveyed through the painting, more than the exposed genitalia of her dying father, that makes the work so shocking and painfully honest.

Reprinted with permission from the author

all images curtesy of Dr Christopher Basile

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Dr. Christopher Basile PhD a filmmaker, ethnomusicologist, musician, composer, teacher, writer, photographer and painter, based in Melbourne, Australia.

He is currently working on a feature length documentary film on the life and work of the great Indonesian artist Kartika Affandi. He has also created and is writing a 6-part documentary series ‘Music Planet’ for Australian TV. How does one come to making documentary films in Indonesia?

In my case, I loved drawing and books from the beginning. Music took over with playing and singing solo and in bands, leading to electronic music and studio engineering - from the days of analog synthesis and tape to midi and digital. Love of drawing and electronic media led to becoming an artist-in-residence in a computer lab (University of Maryland in USA) and computer graphics work.

As an undergraduate in university I fell in love with Indonesian art and culture, and played gamelan which led to study in Bali.

Further academic study led to an MA and then a PhD for research in Ethnomusicology (ie 'anthropology of music' or 'musicological anthropology' depending on your perspective) for field-research on sasandu and sasandu-accompanied song on Roti Island near Timor in Eastern Indonesia. This research fieldwork included translation, field-recording, photography and videography which, developing from a childhood obsession with shooting and editing 8mm film, led to working in documentary filmmaking.

Dr. Christopher Basile drawing in Indonesia

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Kartika Affandi

by Dr. Astri Wright PhD

Kartika Affandi born in 1934, is the leading radical figure of the first generation of modern women artists in Indonesia.

Her painting spans a broad range of themes and palettes, from landscapes, portraits of working people, village and urban scenes and self-portraits. Since abandoning oil paints for acrylics in the early 1990s due to the health hazards of long-term exposure to oils and paint thinners, her colours have become even more vibrant and she is freer to move around with her canvases, which suits her technique and lifestyle better.

As an artist, Kartika self-consciously pioneered her own kind of 'difference' in art and life, in turn, fulfilling and departing from the expected roles of modern artists and of women of class or well-known family background. Compared to the Euro-American modernist pattern, Kartika’s artistic training was unusual: she never studied art formally or systematically, but learned her approach to painting from her father. Affandi, celebrated eccentric pioneer of modern Indonesian painting, taught her not to try to paint what she saw, but rather aim directly for the expression of what she felt. She adopted her father’s techniques of painting directly from the model, in situ, in their own environments, and applying and smearing the paint with her hands and fingers directly onto large, primed canvases. Thus, from the beginning, the artist physically immerses herself in and merges with her artistic medium. By the time she finishes a painting, Kartika would be covered with paint up to her elbows.

Insisting on both the time and right to pursue her art and insisting on maintaining her self-respect in her private life (see Wright 1994), Kartika experienced the social cost exacted of women who chose to challenge the normative roles of wife and mother. She paid, with social ostracization and sexist reviews, for presuming to become a modern artist and for insisting that the letter of Islamic marriage law should be followed equally for men and for women. While other (male) Indonesian artists, whether in the European art historical tradition or the Indonesian, were not faulted for producing work that stylistically placed them squarely within a particular school or tradition, pioneered and developed by its forerunner(s), Kartika was faulted for painting “too much like her father”. Meanwhile, to stick with the Indonesian context, this charge was never to my knowledge levied at Basuki Abdullah, even though his painting was stylistically, for the first three decades of his career, at least, just 102

Kartika Affandi Self Portrait

like that of his father, Abdullah Suryosubroto. Had the issue been raised, early Indonesian critics might have said: “But his themes and subjects are so different from his father’s!” While such an observation is equally true when we compare Kartika with Affandi, this seems to escape critical notice.

I first met Kartika in 1987, at what was then her father’s museum in Yogyakarta. I was hoping to interview Affandi, the living legend of the first generation of Indonesian-Modernist painters -- selftaught, world-taught, colonialism- and nationalist revolutiontaught. Awed at approaching the old, partly deaf man seated in his museum, it was Maryati, his wife, and Kartika his daughter, who nudged me forward and ensured that the young green foreign researcher didn’t turn on her heels and flee. it was only later that I became aware that Kartika and Maryati were both artists in their own right. Kartika’s work, particularly her experimental symbolicexpressionist self-portraits, was so different from anything else I saw in Indonesia and so aesthetically honest and powerful, narratively raw and immediate, that I had to engage with it. The fact that I, coming from a Euro-American background, did not have the ingrained Javanese recoil (so dominant in the modern Indonesian art world) at dramatically expressed, self-referential emotion, helped connect us. It was my fortune that she opened her arms to me as a researcher and friend.

Kartika Affandi is a forerunner for women establishing themselves as modern artists in Indonesia because, through her struggle for visibility, gallery access and critical acceptance in a post-colonial modern art world patterned on the Dutch model, she has become a determined, self-motivated individual with a norm-bending style of her own. Where women of her generation and class did not wear casual clothing in public in the 1980s, she did. Where others did not drive a van around alone, she did. While many would hesitate to study the ax-split head of a buffalo, she didn’t. Another aspect of her behaviour which flies in the face of normative behaviour for her strata of women in Java is travelling alone. She has made many journeys in Indonesia, Asia, Europe and elsewhere, often alone, in order to paint. She has painted, outside, in the freezing snow in Austria and in the burning hot deserts of Australia. She has painted in the small, intimate neighbourhoods of Japanese towns and on the wide, densely populated Piazza di San Marco in Venice. And always, of course, in her own country.

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The dynamic of a woman from Java, monetarily poor while growing up but exposed to a nationalist ethic and an internationalist artistic culture, going into the jungles of tribal West Papua (“Irian Jaya”) to paint Asmat men and women, into the Australian desert to paint Aboriginal men and women, or travelling through the countryside in China to paint men and women of Han and other backgrounds, provides fascinating material for a discussion of the process, content, and motivations in such interracial and intercultural interactions.

Kartika’s occasional practice of placing herself in the canvas with the racially ‘other’ features of the place adds another dimension to the discussion. While conclusions are open-ended, my analysis, based on her example, concludes that not all imaging of ‘others’ need be exploitative or silencing. Kartika Affandi’s painting, I argue, demonstrates how representing ‘others’ can also be a way of furthering their voices and their presence, within their contexts and beyond.

Driving around together, swimming in her wilderness-hermitage pond, and even travelling to paint, together, chatting in hotel rooms and revolution-era warung in Jakarta, we have exchanged, shared, laughed, cried and probed many aspects of life, gender, culture, and art and their connections. Watching how Kartika mustered to me unusual spiritual and emotional resources through one of the hardest times in her life, taught me much about the kinds of choices we have to make and can make, at important junctures in our lives. I also sometimes argue with Kartika. It is always about the same thing: her prospects for a long life. Her bad hip and arthritic bones make it hard for her to walk; perhaps her childhood poverty caused the effects malnutrition does which show up in her mature age, certainly giving birth eight times took its toll. In any case, she does not think she will live to a very old age. She just has this feeling. When Kartika said this to me for the first time in July 1994, ignoring my protestations, it was a statement of fact devoid of melodrama. And then she went on to say: “And only you, Astri, know me and my work well enough to write about me after I am gone.”

I heard this with a mixture of surprise and worry: honoured that she would feel this way, I was overwhelmed, not at all sure that I was up to such a task, and believing in a pluralistic discourse, certainly not alone. But the point here is how such a moment illustrates how it can happen that what starts as a research project, with 104

Kartika Affandi My Father Was Sick

Kartika Affandi Family Portrait

untried-idealist (masculinist) intentions of objectivity and nonpersonal involvement, can become part of a life-long relationship that functions on many levels, involves many kinds of intelligence (IQ, EQ, and more). The field work relationship can involve an imperceptibly growing responsibility towards the people you work with. (And sometimes their ideas of your ability/role supersedes your own or that which academic conventions would deem acceptable).

These are things which must be negotiated openly, both in the field and back in the academic setting, and to be able to be open about such things, a significant degree of familiarity and trust are necessary, in the field, and courage to be seen as a transgressor, in the academic world, as well.

Kartika’s work stands on its own painterly and aesthetic merits.

Interpretation is the arena of art writers. While Kartika's visual and verbal narratives do not appear analytical or overtly political, her observations and intent (in her conversation as in her art) go in the same direction as certain feminist writers and activists. In her work, as she scans her heart and the world for subjects to paint, she identifies lacunae of concern, and then she attempts to cross over to that place, becoming a human bridge. This bridge leads to other people who, like her, struggle to be true to themselves. Kartika becomes a listener and sounding board to other experiences while she paints them, in this way sharing empowerment and respect.

On the level of discourse analysis, Kartika can be seen to create a marker of this exchange, a signpost (a painting) which has an element of advocacy to it, as it carries the traces of other people's voices further afield.

Kartika provides the world with her own, particularized artistic challenge to the notion of what women are and what women artists should create. She shows us how one woman in Java claimed her freedom to define for herself a place, a style, and a voice of her own, with little societal support once she broke out of the ‘famous daughter’ role. Her example also provided a parallel to the situation of the researcher, going against the grain of her academic advisor, persisting in a field that was considered nonexistent, travelling alone in a culture where women were not supposed to travel alone, carrying out a task not recognized or understood by the majority of people around her. Being embraced by Kartika in the early stages of my research empowered me greatly and still does. This relationship, then, illustrates a different model than that of the researcher with 105

power over the ‘data’ and ‘informants’ who constructs ‘them’ without feedback. There is always power in penning someone else’s story, but Kartika’s and my stories are intertwined and the power shifts from moment to moment, where more often she as the elder (and wiser!) has the lioness’ share, in a relationship where having power is not the goal of either party.

Kartika’s border-crossing provides an argument for how and why a woman of my own ethnic background may still be allowed (and allow myself ) to research and write with and about women (and people) of other ethnic backgrounds. Working from a point of departure that takes into account issues raised in Black criticism, avoiding, as far as possible, the monofocus and bias of what bell hooks criticizes as "white men and women ... producing the discourse around Otherness" (hooks, 1990:53) and trying to keep always within sight the importance of ethics in research theory and method, are all part of an ongoing exercise in awareness and reflexivity. Seeing oneself as part co-author, and, like Kartika, as involved with creating signposts designed to carry other people's voices and presences further afield, is one way to minimize dominance and appropriation in cross-cultural work. It is here, in the present era of intensified globalization that Euro-American and Asian women’s concerns intersect. Our concerns meet, not on a platform of historical ‘sameness’, but in the facing of related challenges. In a world where technology, travel and language skills allows for an unprecedented degree of cross-cultural communication, dialogue across differences has a better chance than ever to be fruitful to all parties, even when their conclusions differ....

Footnotes: 21. In my analysis, I do not count Emiria Sunassa as the forerunner here, (1) because she does not appear to me to have been particularly radical; (2) because to our knowledge she did not have an ongoing career as an artist, and (3) only one painting by her is known and that is painted from of a well known photo taken by Walter Spies of a kecak dance performance in Bali. (This does not preclude that, with more information about Sunassa, this framework could change.) Likewise, according to the framework established in Wright 1994 Chapter 7, I also do not include women who are mainly hobby painters and do not pursue it as their main identity and/or profession.

22. For a longer discussion of Kartika Affandi, with more direct inclusions of her voice, see Wright 1994.

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23. Here, again, I depart from the Indonesian canonization (repeated by Claire Holt and most other scholars, including myself in Wright 1991, 1994) of Raden Bustaman Saleh, the 19th century Javanese aristocratic oil painter, as the father of modern Indonesian painting. While his style, medium and subject-matter indeed was new within the Javanese world, and as such could be construed as the beginning of a Javanese modernism, outside of Indonesian post-independence revisionist history, there is no evidence of Raden Saleh having held any conception of a larger cultural or political entity beyond Java, any idea like “Indonesia”, or any interest in alternative, radical ideas in Europe of a revolutionary or populist nature which he would have heard of during his decades at European courts. I see Raden Saleh’s contribution to Indonesian art history as an innovation within the realm of Javanese court art and priyayi culture.

24. See Wright 1991, pp. 276-281 for a discussion (not included in my book) of Affandi’s polygamous marriage, from the perspective of Kartika, as well as a discussion of her own experience of her husband’s polygamy.

25. Small, informal restaurant.

Kartika Affandi Lobsters

26. And yet, all parties in such conversations must remain acutely aware of the challenges inherent in the process. Sophisticated communication across cultural gaps can easily twist and turn into an opposite, unintended dynamic.

The moment when one person gains an upper hand and wields it, often without being aware of it. This is often the person from the strongest economy, with the highest formal education, and the habit of proceeding with a sense of personal (and often institutional) authority; in the research situation, this is often the researcher.

Extracted from SELF-TAUGHT AGAINST THE GRAIN: THREE ARTISTS and A WRITER. Published in: Flaudette May Datuin, Ed., Women Imaging Women: Home, Body, Memory.

Conference Proceedings. Manila: University of the Philippines Department of Art Studies, the Ford Foundation Manila, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1999, pp.118-154.

Reprinted with permission from the author Dr. Astri Wright, PhD Professor of Southeast Asian Art: Historical and Modern Periods Modern and Contemporary Indonesian Art Globalizing World Arts

Kartika Affandi Self Portrait

Department of Art History and Visual Studies Fine Arts Faculty Building, Office 133 University of Victoria Victoria, BC, Canada, V8W 2Y2 Phone: +1-250-721-7949 Email: astri@uvic.ca

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LOVE ME IN MY BAT IK Exhibition review of ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur

by Martin Bradley

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Joseph Tan Love Me In My Batik

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For a long time I thought that collage artwork by Joseph Tan was called Love Me and My Batik, perhaps some sort of lovers ultimatum. If you love me, you’ve got to love what I am wearing too. I was wrong.

ILHAM gallery, Levels 3 & 5, ILHAM Tower no 8, Jalan Binjai, 50480 Kuala Lumpur, who opened their doors for the first time last year (2015) have presented, in their still pristine galleries, an array of Malaysian and Indonesian batik art works called - Love Me in My Batik, the actual title of that 1968 work by Joseph Tan. In the book ‘Batik Fabled Cloth of Java’, (2004) Inger McCabe Elliott mentions; “The roots of batik are ancient, everywhere, and difficult to trace.

No one knows exactly where and when people first began to apply wax, vegetable paste, paraffin, or even mud to cloth that would then resist a dye- But it was on the island of Java and nearby Madura that batik emerged as one of the great art forms of Asia. Batik is known to have existed in China, Japan, India, Thailand, East Turkestan, Europe, and Africa, and it may have developed simultaneously in several of these areas. Some scholars believe that the process originated in India and was later brought to Egypt. Whatever the case, in A.D. 70, in his Natural History, Pliny the Elder told of Egyptians applying designs to cloth in a manner similar to the batik process. The method was known seven hundred years later in China. Scholars have ascertained that batik found in Japan was Chinese batik, made during the Tang Dynasty.” (p22) Previously (1964) Nik Krevitsky, in his book ‘Batik Art and Craft’, had this to say about Batik; “The art of batik has been known for centuries, but its origin, probably thousands of years ago, is still obscure. Briefly, batik is a resist technique for producing designs on fabrics. The process, in simplified form, follows these general steps: Selected areas of the fabric are blocked out by brushing melted wax or a special paste over them. After the wax is applied, the fabric is dyed by brushing dye over it or by dipping it into a dye bath. The waxed areas, repelling the dye, remain the original colour of the fabric. To achieve more intricate designs with further combinations and overlays of colour the waxing and dyeing process is repeated.” (p7) For the purposes of the ILHAM exhibition, only local batik work (from Indonesia and Malaysia) were exhibited for, like all exhibitions, there must be focus. Batik from those countries simultaneously developing the craft up to two thousand years ago (Egypt, China, India etc), were held in abeyance, as were Contemporary Western batik paintings from the 1950s, most

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Chuan Thean Teng Satay Seller

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Indonesian artist Bambang 'Toko' Witjaksono with his characteristic ‘comic book style,

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especially those from Professor of Design (University of California at Riverside) Mary Adrienne Dumas. Her intriguing batik work (for example ‘Wall Hanging’, 1952 and ‘China Shop’,1953, batik on silk) were produced a year or so before Malaysia’s, China born, Chuah Thean Teng began his batik ‘paintings’ at the closure of his batik cloth factory in Penang (1953).

The new ILHAM gallery was not difficult to reach. I used the application ‘Waze’, to navigate from the deep Selangor wilderness to the heart of Kuala Lumpur (Ampang). The ILHAM Tower has its own car park and a separate lift which whisks the, perhaps slightly wary, visitor up to the aforementioned pristine galleries.

Cornered concrete, jutting out at unsuspecting angles lent a distinct sense of being in a human maze. The passages leading to the male toilet especially so. It was all very contemporary and, I understand, architecture is what ILHAM is all about. The main gallery, on the 5th floor was spacious, but seemed a tad clinical.

Perhaps it had been a high powered CEO office space which had recently been vacated. The exhibition design was what you might have expected of Contemporary art galleries some 20 or 30 years ago but, perhaps, not of a recently constructed one.

Because of the spaciousness of the gallery, many of the works seemed dwarfed. Was the gallery, perhaps, designed to house large art works, sculptures, or to cater to huge adoring crowds on opening nights? If that be so then I understand the magnificence of that space, however the design of the exhibition ‘Love Me in My Batik’ was entirely unsuited to the large white walls of that space.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a splendid attempt at the modern history of batik painting, and told the story well, with several obvious omissions. I was excited to see those wonderful works by Khalil Ibrahim, and am sad to have lost contact with him. I also revelled in the Ying-Yang Series - Soul and Form, by Lee Kian Seng, in all their psychedelic hippiness and was surprised to see Bambang ‘Toko’ Witjakson’s works, which I had previous presumed to be screen prints. But it was the design of the exhibition which, overall, made all the efforts seem a little lacklustre. I had a nagging Heath Ledger ‘Joker’ sinisterly rebuking Christian Bale’s Batman in my head, ‘WHY SO SERIOUS’. Many of the works called for a more lighthearted, or at least Contemporary, display. True, there were the gloriously large works by artists such as Yee-i-lan with her Orang Besar series, rippling in the air con, adding some movement to the overall static mounting but, ultimately, it wasn’t enough to take the starchiness from the overall display design.

Since the end of the eighteenth century, galleries and museums were places opened to the public, and where the public engaged and brought their life, their toddlers barely walking. Galleries and museums were spaces in cities which replaced parks on rainy days,

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and were happy to do so. The concept of the pristine, wholly white, gallery came to us via the obsessions of Nazi Germany (1930s), as a symbol of purity, and it has stuck. Before the white cube, gallery walls would be painted to suit the pictures being hung. There would be more interaction between those elements of ‘gallery’ and the current exhibition. Modern exhibitions/displays in Malaysia need to move away from the concept of passiveness, pristineness and aim more towards inclusiveness and a social experience for the community.

Malaysian exhibitions noted for their well designed displays might include Dr. Choong Kam Kow’s Retrospective Exhibition, at the National Visual Arts Gallery, and The Untiring Engraver, an exhibition of Loo Foh Sang’s works at Soka Exhibition Hall, but there have been, no doubt, many that I am not aware of.

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Liew Kung Yu Sehati Sejiwa

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Yee I-Lann, Orang Besar series: 'Kain Panjang with Petulant Kepala

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Art House Gallery

Museum of Ethnic Arts The finest private collection of ethnic art and culture in Malaysia

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Admission Free 11.00 am - 7pm Lot 3.02-3.o3, Level 3, The Annex, Central Market, Jalan Hang Kasturi, Kuala Lumpur, 50050 Malaysia Telephone 60321482283 123

Zheng Yuande Drawings

by Martin Bradley “It is often said that Leonardo (da Vinci) drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.” (Sir Kenneth Clark) Three years ago I had the great pleasure to have a series of interviews with Yuande Zeng, near my home in Malaysia. The following is a taste of this artist’s philosophy and wisdom….

“My quest is to make things more, and more simplified, the portrayal of feeling is more important than the act of recognition”, Zheng said. He went on - “I attended courses in Taiwan – one about movie, I learned about body language, a movie is richer, but more simplified than two dimensional art, for example Charlie Chaplin – no sound and no colour but everything simple and cannot be misunderstood”.

There was something both spiritually Tao and uniquely Zen in that artist’s movements as Zheng talked. As he vocalised he weaved and bobbed, and approached the sculptures we stood before. It seemed to be his own personal dance of revelation. Zheng revealed the energy of sculptures’ grace. Was this a Tai Chi of creation in those full and empty spaces of gallery light, shade, speech and nonspeech, all interacting in the liberty ? Zheng Yuande wove his spell of elegance, simplicity and, perhaps, of enlightenment too for all who watched, all who were willing to learn of grace and beauty.

“Sculpture or painting, figurative or non-figurative, for my work, normally comes from a very personal experience. Especially from life.

In different periods we live in different situations, which enrich us. My choice in subjects and approaches therefore vary. I don’t want to repeat.

In fact there is no way in which we can repeat ourselves. You cannot go back to when you were 20 or 30.”

It is with no doubt that when one thinks of dance and movement, in Art, one is always tempted to go back to that superlative French Impressionist - Edgar Degas. Perhaps it is a forgone conclusion that Degas is synonymous with dance. Consider for a moment his 124

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ballet works, the raised leg dancers like La danseuse aux chaussons (The Dancer with Slippers), Danseuse pratiquant la barre (Dancers at the Bar) and Danseuse assise (Dancer Sitting). In Zheng’s sculptures I could easily identify raised balletic legs, posed arms and the sleek grace with which Degas has us all enthralled. It would be all too easy to make that comparison, especially considering Zheng’s historical love for theatre and his much earlier image making of Chinese Opera.

Zheng’s early work, concerned with Chinese opera, actors, stage sets etc (Otherworld: Glimpses of Chinese Opera, 1988, Make Up, Stories Behind the Door, 1996....), have been likened, by some, to those of the Dutch masters. It is an obvious comparison. Looking

closely at those earlier works, it would seem that, even then, Zheng was concerned with intimacy. Zheng only partially reveals the hidden and half hidden world of Chinese theatre. Zheng makes the viewer promises, hints and suggestions, but ultimately the secrets of the theatre are safe with him.

In those Chinese theatre works, figures which, seemingly, would prefer to remain hidden, or at least masked, ease coyly from shadows reminding the viewer more of the Spanish painter Velazquez, than the Dutch masters, especially with Velazquez’s deeply rendered shadows, and carefully crafted portraiture. In his ‘opera’ works, Zheng superbly renders muscular men who are carefully applying their theatre make-up. Zheng makes manifest their masculinity, 128

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despite the feminine act of applying the make-up. Zheng presents men who are skilled, poised, and every inch men. They have carefully carved, and beautifully delineated, musculature.

In those paintings Zheng gives his viewers a classical deepening black, or dark brown background which throws the warm colours of the actors forward. It is with a great skill and gentle craft that the ‘acts’ are revealed, while only some of the actors are seen. The actors are hidden both by shadows, and by the mirrors they use to apply their make-up (Private Rites, 1986).

Zeng’s vital energy bursts forth not just from his paintings and sculptures, but with his drawing too. More especially from his energetically rasped charcoal drawing on paper. Gunter Grass had once claimed that “Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper.” Zeng explains….

“My exhibition of charcoal drawings I called ‘The Uncoloured Path’, Uncoloured not because there is no colour, but unnamed, when we name something we assume knowledge. This knowledge then becomes the law.

We use our knowledge to frame what we see.”

We realise that the interplay of lighting on sculpture is totally different from that drawn in charcoal, or that which is painted.

In the three dimensional world the environment interacts more succinctly with sculpture. There is a complexity of different light sources from all around, stemming from a myriad different sources.

There are distortions of reflections, a transience of ephemeral 132

colours formed from the material itself and from the interplay of light from those external sources. Through the miracle of physics, we understand that light interacts with sculpture in ways it is not possible to reproduce on a flat surface, and therein lays the beauty of the three-dimensional sculptural work.

Zeng has mastered the uniqueness of charcoal, which imbues its substrate with beauty, energy and a texture complete and idiosyncratically its own. Conventionally much charcoal has been created from graphite (crystallised carbon). Previously, burnt grapevine (vine charcoal) sticks were used as natural charcoal, for it has the ability to produce lines and tones of an infinite subtlety as well as being able to create vigorous effects, echoing the mastery of the wielder. No doubt Zheng chose charcoal it is efficacious too. Charcoal marks may be easily corrected by being dusted, or blown from the surface, lending itself to myriad techniques and manipulation. However, in the works seen here, what ultimately comes across is the energy, the vitality of the artist himself.

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one woman

Every so often a book appears that reveals and illuminates a project that might otherwise remain largely unknown by the outside world: ‘Colors of Cambodia’ is such a book. This is a highly personal and passionate account written by Martin Bradley and illustrated by Pei Yeou Bradley of her encounter with a remarkable art-based project in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia, and how she was drawn into practical involvement with the children for whom the project exists.

The book shows how a small NGO run by William Gentry in Siem Reap has been able to reach out to children in local schools, some in areas of great poverty, through the medium of art, and to give them hope for the future in a country that has suffered so much. The children and their families who are drawn into the project prove how art can cross all borders of language and culture. The book also tells of how Malaysian children and their parents have been encouraged to support the project and to become involved with the children and their work.

This is a highly personal and passionate account written by Martin B remarkable art-based project in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia, for whom the 134

n’s journey

And there is the additional touch of magic as Pei Yeou and Martin tell of their meeting and of how he too was drawn into the story, and contributes to it, and of how it changed his life. His sensitive words and poetry add another colour to this unique book In a world in which the news is bad more often than not, this inspirational book tells a story of optimism and success, and of how dreams can become true.

Richard Noyce, Artist and Writer, Wales, July 2012

contact honeykhor@gmail.com martinabradley@gmail.com

Bradley and illustrated by Pei Yeou Bradley of her encounter with a , and how she was drawn into practical involvement with the children project exists.

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nicholas choong graphically

by Martin Bradley

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Nicholas Choong working on 50 Malayan Tigers

“I use very little red. I use blue, yellow, a little green, but especially... black, white and grey. There is a certain need in me for communication with human beings. Black and white is writing.” (Hans Jean Arp, 1955.)

Last year (2015) saw Malaysian artist Nicholas Choong as ‘Key Visual Artist’ with “Tiger Beer Malaysia’s" TRANSLATE 2015. The year before (2014), he was engaged with a residency with Sembilan Art Residency, in Seremban, Malaysia. Between the 3rd of June and the 19th this year (2016), Choong has a solo exhibition, RETROSPEKTIV displaying works from 2012 to 2016, at Port Commune. Included are abstracts as well as the more graphic works and watercolours that he has become known for.

Images can be very powerful things. Overpowering. I kept seeing this image of multiple tigers on the internet. There were a host of tigers, in black, white and grey. A very strong, collective graphic image. At that time I had no idea who the artist had been, or what the medium was. I just seemed to be acutely aware of those images, appearing over and over again as people admired them, just as those tigers appear in the various incarnations of Nicholas Choong’s huge (acrylic) black and white painting of ’50 Malayan tigers’.

I started seeing other images.This time on the inimitable Facebook.

Strong, graphic line-work. Very bold, striking, almost startling in their starkness. Sometimes those images were monotone, at other times in brilliant colour but, overall, the strength of the line was quite unmistakable, holding those images together. Penang street scenes, vendors, all sang with life, colour, line and an immense vibrancy, full of energy, vitality. Looking at them you just knew that their creator was some kind of Iggy Pop/Vincent Van Gogh with a huge lust for life and tremendous inner creative strength.

Nicholas Choong and I had initially communicated through Facebook Private Messenger, then met in the small shopping centre surrounding Jaya Grocer, in Damansara Perdana, which is on the very outskirts of Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur. He led me to his 137

studio. We talked, took photographs, and each learned a little more about the other.

Once again, I was struck by how much more impressive Choong’s paintings were up close and quite personal. I mentioned that it was so difficult to comprehend paintings/ artworks on the internet, no matter what size screen you have. Not to boast, but mine is a 27 inch iMac and, even so, colour becomes distorted by the screen’s colour settings, the lens of the camera that took the image and how the colours might have been ‘tweaked’ on programmes like Photoshop. It was therefore a joy to see Choong’s works with my own, albeit ageing, eyes. And what works they were.

Accepting my praise for his, literally, brilliant watercolours like the colour rich ‘A Seremban Thang (a.k.a. SB4)’ and ‘A Portrait of Sembilan’, Choong mentioned that watercolour was his ‘go to place’, the area of work where he felt most comfortable. It was the medium which he had previously become known for. That came as no surprise. Malaysia has a particular history of watercolour painting from last century’s Chinese émigré artists to the north, in Penang - such as Chinese born Lee Cheng Yong (1913) and others to the south, in Singapore - like Lim Cheng Hoe (born 1912, in Xiamen, China). Nicholas Choong, born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1977, keeps those Malaysian Chinese watercolour traditions alive, but also enhances the medium with his bright, striking, energetic coloration and his dynamic line work so reminiscent not just of classical watercolourists, but also of comic books artists such as the Philippine artist Alex Nino, or American artist Frank Miller.

Choong was born at a time to be influenced not just by classical painting and paintings, but also by new waves of comic book line art. The strength of the drawing which underpins some of the best Graphic Novels, including Miller’s ‘Sin City’ and Nino’s ‘Tarzan’ and ‘Conan’, is clearly evident in Choong’s dark line work, especially in his black and white acrylic on paper ‘Uncles’ series (produced as part of his work with the Sembilan Art Residency Programme, 2014).

It is somewhat inevitable that Malaysian artists, like most other artists world wide, are drawn to paint what is familiar to them. You paint what you see. Some artists expand their repertoire, go out of their way and tackle iconic or symbolically graphic images which resonate with the diverse cultures which wish to bond together to form a common identity, especially in multi-cultural nations like 138

50 Malayan Tigers

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Uncles Series

Malaysia. Nicholas Choong (in ‘Tiger Translate Presents - The Uncaging of Nicholas Choong’, on ‘Youtube’) suggests that artists must “Choose a new path…” as “…there is so much colour you can add …”. He chooses a new path with images of the most iconic and ironic image Malaysia has - the Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni). This is ironic because, in reality, there are very few Malayan tigers left to roam peninsular Malaysia (an estimated 250 - 340 individuals). They are officially an Endangered species (IUCN Red List). Iconic because the image of Malayan tigers appears everywhere in Malaysia, from the Malaysian coat of arms to antiquarian postage stamps (dating back to the beginning of the 20th century under colonial British rule), logos on banks (Maybank), emblems on cars (Proton) and on those clichéd cans of Malaysian beer (Tiger beer). Nicholas Choong and 140

his painstaking work has done Malaysia proud. His epic depiction of numerous black and white tigers has set the bar high, and thrown a challenge which few could meet.

While Choong may be “at home” with watercolour, there is little doubt that he is equally at ease with the acrylic medium. While meeting with the artist (in his small studio in Damansara Perdana) I noticed that Choong uses ‘Daler Rowney Graduate Acrylics’, as a matter of choice, as opposed to ‘Liquitex’ on his canvases.

He remarked that he was considering a move on from acrylics to oil colours, and the fresh experiences in layering and blending paint that would bring. Choong seemed ever ready for fresh challenges, larger images, longer brushes. It is this adventurous spirit which will take him far.

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Miles

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A Seremban Thang (a.k.a. SB4)

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A Portrait of Sembilan

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Ramadhan Bazaar, Lebuh Queen, Pulau Pinang,

Lebuh Cannon, George Town, Penang

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Traditional Indian Tea Stall

Pasar Besar, Seremban

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jessica volpe sur rĂŠalitĂŠ

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Waiting for You

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Self Portrait

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Morta

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Philip Lassiter Dreamzzz

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Jessica Volpe is a full time artist who has been drawing since the tender age of six. She is influenced by graffiti art and her sister and mother’s artistic achievements. Volpe graduated from OCAD University, in Toronto, and illustrates primarily with ink on paper. She also creates rich, colourfully surreal paintings which are her emotive expressions (in oils) on canvas. She lives and works in downtown Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Volpe says of her work: "By overcrowding my canvases, I aim to free the eye from attempting to recognise, while creating subtle images in negative space. My sketchbooks are my journals, overflowing with symbols and images that make their way onto canvases. With a brush stroke, I recreate the past and reinvent the present as a whimsical dream-like reality."

Jessica Volpe has exhibited her work in New York, Toronto and Los Angeles. Some of her notable clients are: The Bata Museum in Toronto, Crayola Crayons, Samsung and Sleeman Breweries. Volpe has recently teamed up with modify watches to design a line of custom gear, including t-shirts, watches cell phone cases and more. Check out her website at:www.jessicavolpe.com and her online store at: modify.com/jessicavolpe

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Nature’s Last Attempt

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Bowie and Hendrix

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Feline Valley

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The Death of Venus

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Going Bananas About Bananas

by Martin Bradley If, like me, you naively believed that bananas came from Tesco, then you are in for a very rude awakening.

Our beloved banana, the world’s favourite fruit, originated somewhere in the Indo/Malaysian region, according to information gleaned from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, England. Many people, however, claim that Malaysia or Papua New Guinea is the home of the humble banana.

Bananas, once tasted, were later distributed across the world, firstly by inquisitive Arab traders, from whom the humble banana got its name (banan - finger in Arabic) then taken abroad by the Portuguese, Dutch and British colonisers.

According to the tome The Herball, or General Historie of Plantes (1633 edition) by John Gerard, edited by Thomas Johnson - herbalist and merchant, bananas were first seen in England about 1633. Johnson describes how the fruits arrived at his shop, green, and gradually matured in his shop window. However, bananas were not imported regularly, into Britain, until much later, while America was officially introduced to bananas at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, sold, wrapped in tin foil, for 10 cents each.

It will come as no surprise that there are vast varieties of banana (pisang) in Malaysia. There are bananas large and bananas small, bananas sweet and bananas not so sweet. There is the original wild banana, from which all the others were cultivated, eaten only by the Orang Asli (aboriginal peoples of Malaysia) and the sweet, stubby, golden banana (pisang emas) used for making banana cake.

There is the giant green plantain (pisang tanduk) - used for savoury dishes and fried, making slim, hard, banana chips (due to size and firmness). There are a whole host of banana shapes and sizes, and, recently, while strolling through our local market, I counted as many as nine different varieties of banana on one small market stall.

Bananas, in Malaysia, are cooked, not just peeled and eaten raw, but served in a multitude of ways - not necessarily in watery, slightly suspicious, banana custard either. There is a good possibility that schools up and down Britain got the idea for their dire banana dessert, from the splendid Malaysian dish – pengat pisang, which 162

Cavendish Bananas

is made from the slightly tart pisang nangka (jackfruit banana), silky coconut milk and sumptuous palm sugar (gula Melaka).

Deliciously moreish banana cake, mentioned earlier, is made in Malaysian households, not with yellow bottled banana essence, but with real mashed bananas (kek pisang), and is baked until golden brown and its fragrance fills the entire household, making grown men drool - or is that only me.

Banana cake seems to have been first mentioned in Mrs Rorer’s New Cook Book (Philadelphia, 1902), page 697, oddly as a Hawaiian speciality, but is now made the world over.

If anyone has an earlier date for a printed banana cake recipe, please, do let me know.

There is a huge variety of banana goodies sold on the already aromatic streets of Malaysian towns and cities.

Pisang raja bananas are peeled, sliced in half, covered in sweet batter, fried crisply as goreng pisang – an ever-favourite street food during cool mornings and sunset-filled evenings especially amongst longing 163

Local Malaysian Bananas

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Pengat Pisang

Banana Flowers

children. In the early evening you can smell the sizzling oil and the slightly mustiness of the bananas from yards away, and, even though recently fed; I dare you to pass a stall and not stop to sample the sweet-smelling crispy bananas.

Elsewhere in Malaysia, unprepossessing yet golden bananas (pisang emas) are mashed into a paste, flour and sugar added and the resulting mixture carefully dropped into deep, hot oil and fried as sweet cekodok pisang balls. Recently I discovered that a sprinkling of caster sugar and powdered dark chocolate onto the banana balls, really brings out the banana flavour and goes nicely with the local sweet coffee (kopi tarik), but, nice as it is, it is not the traditional way.

Green bananas have their outer skin removed, cut into thumb sized pieces and are curried, frequently using the same curry recipe as for fish curry, but with salted fish and green bananas.

While the banana fruit has its many culinary uses, purple, bulbous banana flower buds (jantung pisang), are sold in local markets, stripped down to their ‘hearts,’ boiled or steamed, and served with rice and hot chilli sauce (sambal), or diced and made into succulent Malay curry (gulai).

Banana leaves (daun pisang) form the basis of the ‘banana leaf ’ meal found in some Indian Malaysian restaurants, and many Indian homes throughout Malaysia, used instead of plates. Also, banana leaves can be softened in the hot sun, and used as wrappers for the infamous nasi lemak breakfast of rice, chilli, dried anchovies etc, or used to wrap mashed bananas sprinkled with shredded coconut, then dry fried to produce ‘maiden in a torn blouse’ (anak dara baju koyak).

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Malaysia is a haven for bananas as they are easily propagated, usually from corm (or offshoot) of the adult plant. Banana plants need constant sunshine and heat, and suit the tropical and subtropical temperatures. Though banana plants desire well-drained soil, when older they prefer plenty of water to produce fruit. Each banana plant only fruits once, but as they produce new plants constantly, through corms, there tends to be a ready supply.

To prevent scratching and marking, also to reduce blemishes and external spots on bananas, banana ‘hands’ are often bagged in coloured polythene – white or clear polythene reduces the effect. It has also been proven that bagging effectively increases the overall weight of bananas, and improves the fruit’s quality (Sri Lankan Dept. of Agriculture, 2002).

As you may imagine, bananas have become integral to life in Malaysia. During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, paper money, with images of the banana plant printed, was used as ready currency - known as Duit Pisang (banana money). Malaysian streets are named after bananas ( Jalan Pisang – Kuala Lumpur) as are whole villages Kampong Pulau Pisang – Banana island village, Perak), even rivers Sungai Pisang – Kuching, Sarawak). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that there is at least one local myth involving bananas.

Zombie Kampung Pisang (Zombies from Banana Village - 2007) is a Malaysian comedy/spoof horror film, directed by Mamat Khalid, based very loosely on local fables of brain eating zombies, but only the right kind of brain, mind you.

Another legend has it that the infamous Pontianak (female vampire ghost – and spirit of a woman who died in childbirth) lives within banana plants. Should you urinate anywhere near the plant the dastardly vampire will seize you, and drain all your blood. To save yourself you must have a sharp object handy, as the Pontianak fears sharp objects. Other tales cite the tying of a red cord from the banana plant to your bedpost, trapping the Pontianak under your spell.

Speaking of spells - earlier I mentioned some of the Malaysian culinary uses of bananas, banana flowers and banana leaves. I will leave you with one more, a favourite of mine – roti pisang - griddled roti cannai (Malaysian oily, layered, flat bread, like an Indian Paratha) entrapping succulent banana slices and taken with creamy, sweet, practically gastronomically forbidden condensed milk, mmmmmm.

As Groucho Marx shrewdly observed – Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

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Maiden in a torn blouse’(anak dara baju koyak)

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Dusun P Books by Martin

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Bradley

Publications 169

CAMBODIA CHINA ITALY

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MALAYSIA PHILIPPINES SPAIN 170