nirmala dutt shanmughalingam

Nirmala

Dutt Shanmughalingam

by martin bradley

The 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

Statement 1

Andy Warhol Death and Disaster A Woman’s Suicide, 1962

- 1993) had once been a shining light in the world of Singaporean Nanyang art (from the 1950s), and Lai Foong Moi had presented canvases like ‘Lady’ (1966), but effectively there had been few female artists recognised in Singapore and Malaysia, or indeed outside, at the time Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam began showing her ‘Contemporary Art’ works in the 1970s.

In 1970s Malaysia, Nirmala Dutt, later to become Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam (when she married the writer M. Shanmughalingam), emerged as a strong contender for the prime Contemporary Artist’s laurels. She had had a fine pedigree, studying under the renown Malaysian artist Hoessein Enas (1924 - 1995), who had championed notions of modernity and Western art through his figurative drawings influenced by the European academic style (Routledge Encyclopaedia of Modernism , 2016).

Nirmala shone her particular socio-political light on war, famine and injustice, not just in Malaysia (yet also so) but in places where injustice was being meted out (often with her pictorial referencing artists such as Andy Warhol and the starkness of his mono-colour ‘Death and Disaster’ series (begun 1962). Warhol, in turn, was looking over his pale shoulder at the ‘Dadaists’. Nirmala also favoured artists such as the collagist Hannah Höch, with her ‘scrapbooks’ with echoed Georges Bataille’s ‘Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-arts, Ethnographie’ journal ‘Documents’ [1929-30]). Nirmala was also drawn to the starkness of artists like the German printmaker Kathe Kollwitz.

Nirmala produced works like ‘Membalak Jangan Sebarangan Nanti Ditimpa Balak’ (Do Not Log Carelessly Lest Misfortune Befall You, 1989) concerning a plight which continues to the present day, in places like Malaysia, where illegal logging continues to threaten the lives and habitat of indigenous peoples. Before this, her early works, such as her mixed media piece ‘Kenyataan 1’ (‘Statement 1’, concerned Malaysia’s environmental destruction, a Mixed Media piece of photography, newspaper, and photo copied

documents on board) was shown in the National Art Gallery (Balai Seni Lukis Negara, Kuala Lumpur). That piece is indicative of the artist’s admiration for Warhol’s multi-image making, and was seen amidst the exhibition ‘Man and His World’ (Manusia da Alamnya, 16/11/1973 to 8/12/1073). Work of the same year (1973) like ‘Manmade Crisis: FAMINE’ (1973, an Acrylic and collage on board) further demonstrated her place within Malaysian Contemporary Art. In that National Art Gallery showing, her work had been exhibited alongside that of Malaysia’s première Contemporary artist Sulaiman Esa.

Nirmala’s journey into the world of art, aside from studying under Enas, had led her into accruing a bank of impressive credentials, including such notable institutions as the admirable Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. (1966), the Fogg Museum School of Art in Boston (1971), and the Oxford Polytechnic (United Kingdom) as well as completing her M.Phil. at London’s Goldsmiths College (1992-1995). All the while she was journeying into the notions of a ‘Contemporary’ art with its multi-faceted and multi-media approach, which Linda Weintraud described saying… ‘No topic, no medium, no process, no intention, no professional protocols, and no aesthetic principles are exempt’ (Linda Weintraub, Making Contemporary Art. How Today’s Artists Think and Work, London 2003.)

Nirmala had no difficulty with being known as a ‘political’ artist and, in the conservative world of Malaysia, was often censored. Her ‘political cartoon’ (drawn from the style of the traditional Malaysian/Indonesian ‘Wayang kulit’, or puppet show) depicting Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan face to face, titled “Friends in Need” was removed from the “Side by Side” exhibition of works

Friends in need 1989

by British and Malaysian artists, at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur in 1986.

In conversation with Wong Hoi Cheong, in ‘Let the bamboo grow in your heart: A conversation with Nirmala’, in the publication ‘The making of an artist as social commentator: A review’ which accompanied the exhibition “Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam: A Review”, at Valentine Willie Fine Art (Gallery in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur), Nirmala remarks…

“The “Friends in Need” painting was about the bombing of Libya by the USA aided by Britain. I made this work as a painful reaction provoked in me by the sight of a dead child being lifted out of the rubble. It was an image of cruelty against an innocent. It came out of an anger, a deeply felt emotion.”

In that conversation, Nirmala goes on to remind us that ‘social commentary’ is not the province of the West alone, and that in the 17th century some Chinese artists too had a strong belief in ‘social commentary’, social criticism too, as has the Eastern tradition of Wayang Kulit (mentioned earlier) which frequently weaves current politics into stories ostensibly concerning the Indian epic, the ‘Ramayana’.

Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam stood out strong as a woman, and as artist who was concerned about, and for, the world in which lived. Her works often revealed, all too well, the pain she suffered when learning of injustice in the world, and shared with us that pain. She was a unique artist living in a country which still continues to strive for meaning in its own hybridity.