Nirmala
Dutt Shanmughalingam
T
by martin bradley
he late Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam (1941–2016) was the doyenne of Malaysian Contemporary art. She had grabbed the baton passed down by fellow Malaysian avant garde artists Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa who, separate or together (‘Towards a Mystical Reality’ 1974), introduced concepts of a burgeoning era of ‘Post Modern’ Western thought into a newly awakening and still freshly founded Malaysia. Those two artists were, effectively, in the vanguard of pioneers in the field of Contemporary arts in Malaysia. Piyadasa and Esa, in turn, had had influences from artists such as Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns in North America, and artists like Eduardo Paolozzi in Britain. Piyadasa and Esa had taken Malaysian art away from the domination of the predominately Chinese Nanyang painting, and the painters of Abstract Expression as well as the more traditional Chinese Ink Brush painting, towards modes of artistic creativity begun with those already mentioned above. In the West, during the 1960s/70s, and while male artists were receiving plaudits, many innovative female artists had been brushed to one side in what was to become a male dominated North American art scene. Andy Warhol had taken precedence over female artists such as Sister Mary Corita, Marisol (born Maria Sol Escobar) and Yayoi Kusama. However, as time moves on, many of the previously overlooked or discarded female artists are coming to light. Malaysia had suffered from a distinct lack of female artists although Georgette Chen (born Chang Li Ying, 1906
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