M—Tan Zi Hao

Tan Z i Hao

In M, there already is a multitude. An alphabet that opens several vocabularies dear to Malaysians, “M” provokes and frustrates us at every utterance of a “Malaysia”, a “Malaya”, a “Malay”, a “Merdeka”, a “multiculturalism”, a “multilingualism”. Beyond the Latin alphabet, M is also the forefront phonetic across innumerable languages that denominates the maternal caretaker. In our infantile babbling of “mama-ma”, we pronounce the bilabial nasal [m], to draw the attention of our mothers: mom, mummy, mak, māma (媽媽), ). But the shared legacy of our mǔqīn (母親), ammā ( babbles has not prevented us from the curse of Babel: we may all be children of mothers, but still we are differentiated by the multiplicity of language, jarringly divided by the exclusivity of certain mother-tongues, certain mother-nations.

Amongst these mothered signifiers, the “M” is as much shared as it is divisive. For in our conspicuous capitalisation of the alphabet “M” — be it “Malaysia”, “Malaya”, “Malay”, “Mahathirism” — we configure various markers of property and propriety, of interiority and exteriority, which in turn, turn us against ourselves.

Taking this host of phonetic and linguistic slippages as an entry point, Tan Zi Hao mulls over the delicate relationship between language and nation, between his mother-tongue and mother-nation, in his first solo exhibition M. Being multilingual in Malaysia, Tan carries with him a sensibility, that, the language we use to declare politics, to reclaim history, to demonstrate selfhood and ownership, is often a language that has already betrayed our endeavours.

Language, to Tan, at once defines and unsettles, imprisons and emancipates us. The “M”, in encapsulating the profound universality of the vocal expression [m], likewise fuels malice between claimants of distinctive mother-tongue and mother-nation. With artworks that hinge upon the nuance of texts and translations, Tan tasks us to question how linguistic ideologies have shaped and unshaped our language experiences, on a place troubled by the multitude of “M”, on a motherland precariously named “Malay[(si)a]”.

Tan Z i Hao

Tan Z i Hao

This book is published in conjunction with Tan Zi Hao's inaugural exhibition M held at A+ WORKS of ART, Kuala Lumpur from 3 to 25 November 2017.

Curator Vincent Leong Project Management Joshua Lim Nikki Ong Editor Tan Zi Hao Writers Tan Zi Hao Zikri Rahman Design nowornever.my Photography Puah Chin Kok KuwaKenta Printer Pakatan Tusen Cetak Sdn Bhd

Published by

A+ WORKS of ART (JL Contemporary Art Sdn Bhd) d6 - G - 8, d6 Trade Centre 801 Jalan Sentul 51000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia +60 18 333 3399 info@aplusart.asia www.aplusart.asia All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or others without prior permission in writing from the Director of A+ WORKS of ART. © 2017 A+ WORKS of ART, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the artist and the writers for the works of Tan Zi Hao ISBN 978 96715431 0 8 www.aplusart.asia Edition of 500 Printed in Malaysia

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Contents

Address, Alamat

4

TAN ZI H A O

Bahasa-(Bahasa) 13 ZI KRI RA H M A N

Artworks 19 Artist Profile

46

Acknowledgements 48

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Address, Alamat

Tan Zi Hao

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1 Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 318.

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Language will have already addressed me before my addressing of it. It hails me into addressing, guilts me into responding to another’s speech. To address, so to speak, is to acknowledge one’s relation with and within language: an “address”, with its attendant polysemy, situates one in language and in place. For the address is not only one’s delivery of speech, it is one’s alamat. Behold the united front of language and geography: in addressing, in responding in a certain language, by the stereotypes operative today, it will have already announced me and my location, prior to my speech. Never have I the capacity to reciprocate this damning in disguise. For as soon as I set off an outcry, language outflanks me at that instant and rehabilitates me. Those languages to which I commit and declare my allegiance, assigns me to some decorum I do not necessarily endorse, but are embedded nonetheless in their invisible contract, the moment they set my tongue in motion.

Not least to blame for this linguistic imprisonment is that language alone summons me into existence. It will have already arrived, through a discourse that, in anticipation of my birth, addresses me, in Hokkien, owing to the lineage of my father, “Tan” ( 陳 ); the gender of my body, “Zi” (子, meaning “son”); and a masculine courage I was to abide by, “Hao” ( 豪 , meaning “bold”). “Naming”, as Walter Benjamin points out, “is that by which nothing beyond it is communicated, and in which language itself communicates itself absolutely” [italics original]. 1 My name, some “陳子 豪 ” (chénzIˇ háo), determines my location: a “Chinese”, foremost, and by the Latinization of the Hokkien appellation, not just any Chinese but a Malaysian one distinctively.

For, the Latinized equivalent of a Mainland Chinese citizen sharing the same name would be identified as “Chen Zihao”; a Taiwanese, “Chen Tzu-Hao”; a Hong Kongese, “Chan Tsz Ho”. It is only in Malaysia (or Singapore) that I can be justifiably addressed as “Tan Zi Hao”. As a principal linguistic identifier, my name is already an address of my own, imprinting upon me a language and a corresponding geography.

An individual named and so addressed is immediately subjected to a bondage of coherency between language and geography. In the following wisdom: if an address at once situates the individual in language and in place, it also demands that one’s tongue must correspond to one’s proper place. Any other way is regarded as inconsistent, unfit, out of place. This bondage is a test of authenticity.

Exclusionary, it seeks out contaminants; the ill-adapted suffers rejection. The incoherence of the address, inauAddress, Alamat

thenticates, invalidates. Otherwise stated, one’s mother, mother-tongue, and mother-land, are expected to cohere.

And yet, from my mother’s womb to my mother-land, mother-nation, and mother-tongue, mothered signifiers altogether, they point to nothing similar. The incoherence of my address as such summons me to a mother-nation that is inconsistent to my mother-tongue. The address of my alamat, which settles me, unsettles the address of my name. Only with the stubborn stillness of hyphens—a “Malaysian-Chinese” citizen, a “Hokkien-Hakka” child—which, simultaneously bridge and distance the two, can multiple mothered signifiers appear abreast as unwilling couples. 2 To get a fuller picture, one need only observe the occasional chastening of such incoherence. Those whose names fail the test of authenticity have been doomed to flounder in a mire of litigation: a Malaysian-Chinese-Muslim named “Lim Jooi Soon” had to battle Islamic authorities for five years to retain his Chinese name; 3 a “Tang Woon Seng” of Indian descent had his MyKad revoked for bearing a name malapropos to his proper place. 4 So banal is the incriminating bondage that we have an untiring array of neologism to label those whose spoken English belies their geography: banana, poyo, bajet, English parrupu, and so on.

This invalidating exercise implies that one’s tongue must coincide with one’s place – be it a sovereign territory, or more abstractly, a speech community.

However, those offended by these labels, tend to retaliate by ascertaining exactly how legitimately “authentic” they are, thereby plunging into the very predicament that enlivens the bondage they denounce. When MalaysianChinese Michelle Chen 5 revealed to another local that she does not speak Mandarin, a likely response was given, “But aren’t you from here?”. Yet she never veers off the beaten track when she concludes affirmatively: “Bananas are Malaysian Chinese too”. The irresistible bondage of authenticity compels one to resort to the naivety of the address. To this end she auto-validates herself that she is as “Malaysian” as any other, blind to a precondition that, above all, has permitted the invalidating mechanism to take place. She becomes the mouthpiece of her own enemy: the systematic territorialization and immobilization of language, through the auto-legitimation of nation-states and other forms of imagined communities.

Like any political entity, “Malaysia” has attempted to immobilize languages through selective (de)nationalization exercises: from Razak Report, PPSMI, MBMMBI, to converting the Malay language to “Bahasa Kebangsaan” or “Bahasa 6

2 Hyphens are not trivial, they are sediments of multiplicity, miniaturized. For Jacques Derrida, “[a] hyphen is never enough to conceal protests, cries of anger or suffering, the noise of weapons, airplanes, and bombs.” Taken to the extreme, no individual is without a hyphen — each is immediately hyphenated by a father and a mother. Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other ; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 11.

3 Malay Mail Online, “Ethnic Chinese embrace Islam, but keep names to resist ‘becoming Malay’ ”, Malay Mail Online, 15 June 2015, http://www. themalaymailonline.com/ malaysia/article/ethnic-chineseembrace-islam-but-keepnames-to-resist-becomingmalay#2rDGVpasARCyvuT5.97 [accessed 10 October 2017].

4 Raja Noraina Raja Rahim & Mohd Khidir Zakaria, “M’sian Indian man, raised Chinese and bearing Chinese name, has MyKad seized; declared non-citizen”, New Straits Times, 2 October 2017, https://www.nst.com.my/ news/nation/2017/10/286446/ msian-indian-man-raisedchinese-and-bearing-chinesename-has-mykad-seized [accessed 10 October 2017].

5 Michelle Chen, “You don’t speak Chinese?”, Free Malaysia Today, 13 September 2017, http:// www.freemalaysiatoday.com/ category/opinion/2017/09/13/ you-dont-speak-chinese/ [accessed 10 October 2017].

Tan Zi Hao

6 Nanyang Siang Pau, “ ‘ 不懂 國語就回中國 ’ – 婦女遇劫報 警遭譏諷 ”, Nanyang Siang Pau, 5 September 2010.

7 Maria Boletsi, Barbarism and Its Discontents (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), pp. 69–72.

8

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Sir Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary: Etymologically and Philologically Arranged, with Special Reference to Cognate Indo-European Languages, eds. E. Leumann, C. Capperller, & other scholars (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2005 [1899]), p. 722.

Malaysia”. Assertions of authenticity can only be made possible with this positioning: firstly, to situate a language with an address; secondly, to address the populace with only that language, and those who fail to register it are deemed a lesser being. A police officer could refuse to file a report for an individual who stammered in Malay.

He remarked instead: “Jika tak tahu cakap bahasa melayu, balik cina”. 6 More disheartening is the general response that considered this censure as an accomplishment. For a broken tongue, institutional disservice was applauded.

As if matter-of-factly, the individual, for choosing to be unintelligible and incoherent in Malay, does not deserve to be addressed as an equal being. But the nation-state is not the only fixed point whereby we measure deviation. To the same effects are certain SJK(C) schools who penalize students for conversing in non-Mandarin Chinese dialects within their compound – typically a few cents per utterance. Like a purifying mission, the schools as the preserver of the “Chinese language” have served to exorcize intra-Chinese distinction. The kernel of the problem is not language but the systematic territorialization thereof. The presumption that one’s tongue and one’s proper place has an innate connection—and by all means must it be maintained in order to be addressed, to be responded to—rests on an idealism of authenticity.

That the coherency of one’s address, in language and in place, can render a human less deserving of our responsibility, shows how much we have lapsed into indifference.

We have entrusted the condition of being human to the rectitude of language.

Speak my language or relinquish your rights to be understood. This is an understatement than an overstatement. Language, as the paramount medium of the address covertly serves as our yardstick for evaluating humanhood.

A human reduced, as the common wisdom goes, is brute, savage, animal-like. Lest we forget, the word “barbarian”, derived from the Greek root bárbaros (βάρβαρος), is an onomatopoeia of “bar-bar-bar” referring to the unintelligible gibbering of foreigners. 7 The Sanskritic cognate barbara ( ), likewise, denotes “stammering” and implies “a low fellow, blockhead, fool, loon”. 8 Not only is language the sole criterion of otherness, it determines what qualifies as human. This linguistic bondage of the address culminates in what Giorgio Agamben calls the anthropological machine, that is, a discourse that produces the human by selectively animalizing, hence excluding, some features of the human life. By default, language makes the human, human: Address, Alamat

What distinguishes man from animal is language, but this is not a natural given already inherent in the psychophysical structure of man; it is, rather, a historical production which, as such, can be properly assigned neither to man nor to animal. If this element is taken away, the difference between man and animal vanishes, unless we imagine a nonspeaking man—Homo alalus, precisely—who would function as a bridge that passes from the animal to the human. But all evidence suggests that this is only a shadow cast by language, a presupposition of speaking man, by which we always obtain only an animalization of man (an animal-man, like Haeckel’s ape-man) or a humanization of the animal (a man-ape). [italics original] 9 With language, the homo-sapienization of the human animal is complete. It puts us in place, to be legitimately addressed as a human being. Is not the address—my name, my alamat, or other identifications required of an addressee—the modern manifestation of the anthropological machine, through which the human is discerned and assessed? And so, who deserves our addressing, our response and responsibility? 10 Commonplace discrimination, like “sakai” betokening a preliterate, uncivilized savage, 11 or “Indon” as an occasional abbreviation of “Indonesia Donkey”, 12 is symptomatic of the animalization of the human. Depriving one of language becomes the precondition upon which xenophobia operates. Literally, without address, without alamat, the pre-linguistic is lesser than human. Un-addressable, they can be denied human treatment. They neither deserve to be responded to nor our responsibility. This gives rise to figures like the “undocumented”, the “irregular”, the “illegal”, all of which are telling substitutes for the dispossession of one’s address.

Those without written documentations are without residence. The enterprise of anthropological machines here extends itself from language to scription, where writings alone suffice to drive a civilizing mission. “Writing is a strange thing”, writes Claude Lévi-Strauss, “of all the criteria by which people habitually distinguish civilization from barbarism, this should be the one most worth retaining: that certain peoples write and others do not.” 13 To be addressed and documented, is to be redressed and encoded as a civilized subject, a nationalized citizen, an immobilized body. In officiating one’s entry into a nation-state, the written alamat registers us into objective 8

9

Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 36.

10 “[T]he anthropological machine of the moderns […] functions by excluding as not (yet) human an already human being from itself, that is, by animalizing the human, by isolating the nonhuman within the human.”

Giorgio Agamben, Ibid., p. 37.

11 Robert K. Dentan, “The Persistence of Received Truth: How the Malaysian Ruling Class Constructs Orang Asli”, in Robert L. Winzeler (ed.), Indigenous Peoples and the State: Politics, Land, and Ethnicity in the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1997), pp. 98–134.

For a more in-depth discursive analysis of the term “sakai”, see: Sandra Khor Manickam, Taming the Wild: Aborigines and Racial Knowledge in Colonial Malaya (Singapore: NUS Press, 2015).

12 Henry H. Winarno, “Sebut Indonesia, bukan Indon”, merdeka.com, 14 March 2013, https://www.merdeka.com/ peristiwa/sebut-indonesia-bukanindon-reportase-dari-sabah. html [accessed 5 September 2017]. See also: Human Rights Watch, Help Wanted: Abuses against Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Indonesia and Malaysia (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004), p. 46.

13 A further note: “it [writing] seems to favour rather the exploitation than the enlightenment of mankind. […] If my hypothesis is correct, the primary function of writing, as a means of communication, is to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.” Claude Lévi-Strauss, “A Writing Lesson”, in Tristes Tropiques, trans. John Russell (New York: Criterion Books, 1961), pp. 291–292; see also: James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 220–237.

Tan Zi Hao

14 It is instructive that Frantz Fanon opens Black Skin, White Masks (1967) with the predicament of language: “I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. That is why I find it necessary to begin with this subject, which should provide us with one of the elements in the colored man’s comprehension of the dimension of the other.

For it is implicit that to speak is to exist absolutely for the other” [italics original]. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans.

Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 17.

15 Vincente L. Rafael, The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2005), p. 12.

16 The more familiar sense of the address as the written particulars of a place is developed only in the 17th and 18th centuries.

See: John Ayto, Word Origins: The Hidden Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed.

(London: A&C Black, 2005), p. 7.

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existence in language and in place. Our alamat is perhaps the single most monolingual marker that has come to address our presence. With it, toponyms are inscribed monolingually in Malay. Any alamat translated is nullified: a Malaysian address translated into English cancels itself out, abnegates its privilege to be located; a Malaysian address written in Chinese characters immediately catapults itself out of Malaysia. What discrepancy still remains of the address is a mere testament to the bondage of coherence between language and geography.

But skepticism must be called for in face of such an inevitability. The itinerary of language, even if confined to a single word “alamat”, rarely journeys in solitude. Imprisoned in it is perhaps a history of phoneme as fleeting as clouds on the wind, disperse before they thicken. The bondage of coherence, despite being a self-reliant anthropological machine, is often beset by the incoherence of our spoken language. At the most fundamental level, every form of addressing, every rendition of alamat, is an attempt at bridging some forms of incoherence. For the addressor to be comprehended by the addressee, the latter will have already posited a challenge to the former at the commencement of speech. On behalf of the addressee, the addressor must resort to thinking otherwise. Language exists in that it exists absolutely for the other. 14 What Vincente Rafael considers as the “crisis of address” is the troubled but unavoidable lesion between “Who speaks?” and “Who is spoken to?” 15 Or differently put: Who addresses? Who is being addressed? Authenticity of the address leeches off of the poverty of language. Because in addressing the other, one will have confronted the limit of one’s own tongue.

With all its penchant for monolingualism, the scription of the address, the alamat, is hardly ever monolingual. The fascism of language is only insured by what it earnestly keeps silent – its anarchic counterpart.

Precisely in the word “alamat” we find the radicalism of language comes into full effect. A word is seldom trite.

To fully appreciate the inessentiality of a word, it is fitting to begin with its essence: the etymon. There, etymology unveils an essence in all its corruptibility. Whereas the English “address”—having derived from the Latin ad-directus, meaning “to direct”—directs and guides, straightens and redresses; 16 the Malay “alamat”—borrowed from the Arabic ‘alāma (‫)ﻋﻼﻣﺔ‬, denoting “sign” or “insignia”—signals and hints. Only with the systematic codification of toponyms, introduced through colonialism, did the two become synonymous. But more importantly, whither does the sign Address, Alamat

(read: “alamat”) direct (read: “address”) us? Whither would alamat address us?

How Arabic terms like “alamat” enter into the Malay vocabulary remains a question and much ink has been spilled. But as an Arabic term, it did not arrive directly from Arabic. 17 The wayward journey of Malay loanwords from Arabic is, according to Stuart Campbell, “travelworn”, 18 for having journeyed across the Indian Ocean. To etymologists, Malay loanwords from Arabic arrive either through Persianized Arabic, or Persianized Hindustani, if not Bengali. 19 What is guaranteed in their itineraries is that every loanword is essentially, etymologically, sedimented multiplicity. Travel-worn, travel-torn. The Malay language as a lingua franca comes into being through the wear and tear of our travelling tongues. Still we have yet to reach the etymological crux of alamat. The Arabic ‘alāma, in itself, keeps a unique cipher of its own. In every utterance of the Malay “alamat”, the Arabic letters ‫‘( ع‬ayn), ‫( ل‬lam), ‫( م‬mim) are ushered in to further expand the Malay vocabulary. With the consonantal tripartite ‘ayn-lam-mim (‘-l-m), come “ilmu”, “alam”, “alim”, “ulama”, “maklumat”, and surely, “alamat”; all of which demonstrate to us connotations of “knowing”. 20 Appended to the Malay alamat, the Arabic ‘ayn-lam-mim is dragged along in our addressing, across the sememic stratum, to articulate an epistemology of knowledge (i.e.: ilmu), a philosophy of acknowledging the other (i.e.: matlamat, maklumat), and of being learned, worldly (i.e.: alim, alam). If language exists absolutely for the other, so too is the word “alamat”—as an address, as a signpost—that points to the other. Encapsulated in “alamat” is a discourse of knowledge that takes alterity as its utmost precondition. To know is to risk contamination, to be othered, to be mobilized, to be foreign. That the etymology of alamat signals a connection between knowledge and mobility is by no means coincidence. For Franz Rosenthal, the consonantal root ‘ayn-lam-mim can be traced further back to pre-Islamic Arabic, whereby the nomadic Bedouin relied on signposts in their travelling: the connection between “way sign” and “knowledge” is particularly close and takes on especial significance in the Arabian environment. For the Bedouin, the knowledge of way signs, the characteristic marks in the desert which guided him on his travels and in the execution of his daily tasks, was the most important and immediate knowledge to be acquired. 21 10

17 Alessandro Bausani, “Notes sur les mots persans en malayoindonésien”, Acta Iranica 2 (1974): 347–379; Russell Jones, Arabic loan-words in Indonesian (London: Indonesian Etymological Project, 1978).

18 Stuart Campbell, “The Distribution of -at and -ah Endings in Malay Loanwords from Arabic”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 152, 1 (1996): 34.

19 Stuart Campbell, Ibid., pp. 37–38, n. 16. See also: Nikolaos van Dam, “Arabic loanwords in Indonesian revisited”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 166, 2/3 (2010): 218–243.

20 Russell Jones, C.D. Grijns, & J.W. de Vries (eds.), Loan-words in Indonesian and Malay (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2007), pp. 119, 190.

21 Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), p. 10. See also: Roxanne L. Euben, “Cosmopolitanism Past and Present, Muslim and Western”, in Mehrzad Boroujerdi (ed.), Mirror for the Muslim Prince: Islam and the Theory of Statecraft (New York: Syracuse University Press), pp. 311–312.

Tan Zi Hao

22 Ronit Ricci, “The Malay World, Expanded: The world’s first Malay newspaper, Colombo, 1869”, Indonesia and the Malay World 41, 120 (2013): 168–182.

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The word “alamat”, insofar as it denotes residence, will have already strayed us off course. Prior to its arrival in Malay, prior to the nationalization of the Malay language, it will have already unsettled itself, elsewhere, as a sign for the nomadic, for the un-addressable.

It is also of interest to note in passing that the first Malay newspaper, published in 1869 for the Malay diaspora in Colombo, Sri Lanka, was fittingly named Alamat Langkapuri. 22 Again, we have with us here an address out of bounds. Imprinted with Malay, Tamil, and Arabic languages, the multilingual Alamat Langkapuri mediated the flow of ideas between maritime Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, acting as a signpost, literally an alamat, for the travelling Malay diaspora. Today, those who hurl the racist abuse “mamak” to invalidate another for being contaminated by all things Tamil, consign to oblivion the pioneering establishment of the Malay social imaginary that had once relied on a trilingual interplay between Malay, Tamil, and Arabic. A broader Malay geography—Alam Melayu, ‘alām, ‘alāma—is one that is not bound by sovereign territories but by the transgressive mobility of languages.

Multilingualism as such may take us by surprise and yet it is not unknown. Whenever Malay nationalism swells at this current time, worthless dogmatism can reiterate itself by quelling what it considers as contaminants. The nationalist imperative of alamat has delimited territorial boundaries to a linguistic, cultural realm. In vain, nationalists hope in its fragmented reality to look for a guardian of their identity, who can act in filial subservience to their xenophobic bigotry. Not quite convinced themselves, they must diligently sermonize to fellow addressees the uncontested genuineness of the Malay language.

Too long has language fought the battle of our petty callings to uphold the impossible triumph of monolingualism: be it through the nationalization of a dominant language or even the preservation of a “dying” language.

Different principles nonetheless, both are oblivious to the anarchic aptitude of language, which cares not what it would make of us. Where one language ends and another begins, is a question we never ask. We cling onto language like a parasite, as if it could ensoul us – “Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa” (the language is the soul of the nation). In the advocacy of language, we will have already confronted its own death.

The most trivial speech makes and unmakes language.

Every linguistic corruption and mispronunciation, sedimented, amasses into an othering accent, which, given time, may pidginize, creolize, vernacularize. Language, Address, Alamat

if we can hitherto speak of a language, evolves only by the parody of sound and sense, survives through its capacity to absorb contaminants. The crisis of address will have already thrown us out of mother-tongue, mother-land, mother-nation. Redemption amounts to renunciation. Disseminated through its travel-worn, travel-torn journey, language is an anarchist whose agency is realized by the bastardization of our speech. Glorifying a language is no more than quoting a book we never read in full. By and large, some treachery lies in proximity to our unchecked addresses.

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Tan Zi Hao

Bahasa(Bahasa)

Zikri Rahman

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Within all linguistic formation a conflict is waged between what is expressed and expressible and what is inexpressible and unexpressed.

— Walter Benjamin 1

Throughout the world the boundaries of nation-states and the boundaries of linguistic distributions rarely overlap – many nations share the same language; many states are officially multilingual; in some the most official language is no one’s mother tongue.

1 Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, dlm Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, sunt. Peter Demetz, terj. Edmund Jephcott (New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), h. 320.

2

Gopal Balakrishnan, “The National Imagination”, dlm Gopal Balakrishnan (peny.), Mapping the Nation (London: Verso, 2012), h. 207.

3

Naoki Sakai, Translation & Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), h. 5.

4

“All that is asserted here is that all expression, insofar as it is a communication of mental meaning, is to be classed as language.

And expression, by its whole innermost nature, is certainly to be understood only as language; on the other hand, to understand a linguistic entity it is always necessary to ask of which mental entity it is the direct expression.”

Walter Benjamin, Op. cit., h. 315.

— Gopal Balakhrisnan 2

Untranslatablity does not exist before translation: translation is the a priori of the untranslatable.

— Naoki Sakai 3

Dapat tidak dapat, bahasa adalah segala-galanya yang tidak mungkin dapat diungkap sepenuhnya; lohong infiniti budaya yang tidak terjangkaukan. Yang terhegeh-hegeh mengutarakannya sebagai puing fosil serta runtuhan artifak negara bangsa sekaligus sedar ianya perkara sia-sia untuk sekadar dipertahankan tanpa wujudnya penilaian yang jernih. Bahasa tetaplah bahasa, takkan pernah selesai tuntas jikapun di-Perlembagaan-kan tanpa melihat kepada, antaranya, realiti hubungan konstruk kuasa dan wujudnya pergelutan pembentukan proses linguistiknya.

Dalam hal ini, ada sesuatu yang perlu diperjelaskan secara lanjut tentang soal pembentukan proses linguistiknya.

Di mana secara teoritikalnya, segala ekspresi yang memberikan kemampuan kepada pemaknaan fikrah adalah apa yang kita fahami sebagai “bahasa”. Kemudiannya, kita akan mempersoal apakah wujud entiti linguistik yang dapat mengungkapkan segala rencam ekspresi yang ada. 4 Perihal entiti linguistik yang inilah di mana pergelutan akan segala macam isi perut makna yang sekaligus kita sangka sebagai sesuatu yang absolut dan tunggal. Apakah proses pembentukan linguistik yang kemudiannya menjadikan ianya dilihat sekonkrit itu? Bagaimana kita kemudiannya, sedar tidak sedar, berperanan di dalam mengabsahkan pembentukan lingustik lewat realiti serta subjektiviti ini?

Utamanya, untuk merungkai persoalan-persoalan ini adalah dengan melihat bagaimana bahasa direbut di dalam ruang keseharian. Serinci mikro-komunikasi pengungkapan jual-beli di pasar malam sehinggalah pasrah seorang sarjana muda terpaksa memilih bahasa Inggeris 14

Zikri Rahman

5 Walter Benjamin, Ibid., h. 325.

6

Zulkifli Mohamad al-Bakri, Rashidy Jamil al-Rashid, & Mohd Aizam Mas’od, Keabsahan Penggunaan Nama Allah SWT Hanya Untuk Orang Islam (Putrajaya: Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia, 2010).

Juga boleh didapati di: http:// jkim.islam.gov.my/e-penerbitan/ keabsahan-penggunaan-namaallah-swt-hanya-untuk-orang-islam [diakses pada 4 Oktober 2017].

7

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990), h. 120.

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yang memonopoli informasi untuk menulis kertas kerjanya kerana dibangsatkan oleh apa yang dipanggil globalisasi, misalnya. Ruang-ruang keseharian seperti inilah sekaligus membuka erti bahasa untuk dimaknakan, bahkan terbuka untuk “disalah tafsir” – yang tak diterjemah, tertafsir malah terungkapkan. Kerana saat bahasa diunjur sebagai sebuah kelakuan dialogikal dalam proses sosialisasi subjektiviti kolektif dan individual, langsung ianya bukan milik yang mengungkap serta yang membalas kecuali untuk kita fahami adalah apa yang diterjemahkan sematamata, tidak lebih, tidak kurang: “Translation is removal from one language into another through a continuum of transformations. Translation passes through continua of transformation, not abstract areas of identity and similarity.” 5 Bertitik-tolak dari hal yang ini, kontinum proses penterjemahan dan pentafsiran inilah yang kemudiannya diabsahkan oleh aparat penguasa dalam “menjinakkan” serta melakukan pengharaman bahan bacaan sehinggalah sebahagian termaterma definitif khususnya soal sosio-agama 6 dalam usaha mengawal trajektori makna di dalam ruang wacana publik yang sekaligus dibungkam hasil dari dinamika dominasi yang terjadi.

Pengamatan oleh sarjana James C. Scott tentang perlakuan di dalam ruang keseharian untuk merungkai fenomena yang dipanggil sebagai “hidden transcript” 7 yang dibentuk serta dikekalkan melalui praktis linguistik memainkan peranan yang penting dalam membuka ruang sosial autonomi bagi “salah tafsir”. Corak serta wacana bahasa yang diangkat dalam ruang keseharian bahkan hampir mustahil untuk diperantarakan dan dikawal. Seterusnya, yang utama adalah untuk memahami bagaimana sesebuah kelompok dominan bertujuan untuk memeras dan menganggu-gugat pengeluaran serta pemaknaan di dalam persilangan hubungan kuasa yang wujud lewat bahasa.

Bersinambungan dari pernyataan di atas, pemaknaan tidak hanya hadir melalui apa yang dikatakan “kebenaran” semata-mata namun dengan dualiti “salah tafsir” itu sendiri. Bahkan, mungkin yang utama adalah untuk kita merungkai persoalan “salah tafsir” di dalam persoalan tentang bahasa dan pembentukan linguistik kerana ianya turut bersangkutan dengan pembinaan pengalaman subjektiviti.

Dalam hal ini, posisi moral yang tegar serta stabil bersikap paternalistik oleh penguasa (yang bukan sahaja terhad hanya kepada badan dan agensi kerajaan malahan turut melibatkan masyarakat lambak dan organisasi sivil), tidak memungkinkan pengelabuan (greying) tafsiran dalam membuka pergeseran rencam budaya sekaligus penyahstabilan Bahasa-(Bahasa)

makna untuk langsung mengambil tempat. Dalam soal ini, pelarangan seringkali bertujuan untuk mengekalkan ketuanan sosial dan budaya yang akhirnya membentuk objektifikasi serta eksternalisasi massa yang dinyah peka (desensitized); menyendeng serta merasionalkan keperluan untuk mewujudkan kebergantungan kepada kekuasaan untuk keabsahan, dalam soal ini – pengabsahan makna “kebenaran” dalam bahasa.

Seperkara yang perlu kita mengerti tentang bahasa adalah ianya takkan lari jauh dari soal hubungan kekuasaan, apatah lagi soal ideologi sebagai kuasa. Wacana relasional yang melibatkan ideologi formal serta kelakuan fungsional 8 dalam membina subjektiviti bahkan membuka ruang kedualan—bahasa “baik” dan bahasa “buruk”, antaranya—yang ekstrem sekaligus merencatkan pemikiran kritikal dalam menanggapi pembentukan dan proses linguistik. Bagaimana kemudiannya proses “salah tafsir” ini dapat kita fahami sebagai sebuah kerja penterjemahan budaya 9 dan selanjutnya, pentafsiran budaya yang kemudiannya dapat kita komunikasikan di peringkat kolektif lewat unsur seni; dari serumit papan tanda kedai sehinggalah sesederhana sebuah karya arca contohnya? Apakah wujud apa yang diertikan sebagai “terjemahan balas” 10 yang memungkinkan wujudnya proses rizomatik yang yang berterusan atau bagaimana?

Mengakrabi persoalan di atas, aforisme Jacques Derrida tentang bahasa di mana ungkapnya, “I have but one language—yet that language is not mine”, 11 sekaligus menyuakan kita akan soal keterhadan, atas kapasiti individu mahupun kewarganegaraan dalam sesebuah negara bangsa untuk “memiliki” makna sesebuah bahasa. Jadi, sebenar-benarnya pemilikan bahasa—dialek, patois, slang—yang bagaimana kita maksudkan? Dan saatnya kita memiliki dan menamakan bahasa, apakah kita langsung memperolehi segalanya? 12 Dalam hal ini, tarik-tali fungsi kebergunaan/fungsi utilitarian bahasa, di antara “menggunakan” atau kemudiannya “dipergunakan” bahasa dalam mencapai makna realiti dan subjektiviti yang semakin runcing untuk kita tanggapi, khususnya dengan melihat proses “salah tafsir” sebagai sebuah ruang kemungkinan merungkai proses pembentukan linguistik bahkan, barangkali raison d’etre sesebuah negara bangsa.

Kiranya yang dititip oleh Naoki Sakai, seorang sarjana kajian penterjemahan, yakni sewaktu mengajukan bagaimana disiplin penterjemahan yang merupakan “oscillation or indeterminacy of personality in translation” 13 16

8 Jay Koh, Art-Led Participative Processes: Dialogue & Subjectivity within Performances in the Everyday (Helsinki: University of the Arts Helsinki, 2015), h. 76.

9

Pastinya, “budaya” yang dimaksudkan dalam hal ini akan bersentuhan dengan hanya salah satu elemen budaya sahaja iaitu aspek bahasa. Namun, lensa atau cara pandang penterjemahan malahan pentafsiran ini kiranya turut luas untuk dipakai ke dalam pemaknaan entiti budaya yang lainnya.

10 Naoki Sakai melalui esei pengenalannya ada membincangkan tentang “countertranslation”. Lihat: Naoki Sakat, Op. cit., hh. 7–8.

11 Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, terj. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

12 “God’s creation is completed when things receive their names from man, from whom in name language alone speaks.” Walter Benjamin, Op. cit., h. 319.

13 Naoki Sakai, Op. cit., h. 14.

Zikri Rahman

14 Naoki Sakai, Ibid., h. 13.

15 Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History Of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), h. 3.

16 Bagi menjawab Benedict Anderson, Gopal Balakrishnan antaranya menyatakan bahawa “[v]ery few conceive of even a distant future in which their language is not spoken, and more interestingly, because simply false, may have difficulty imagining a past in which their language didn’t exist.” Gopal Balakrishnan, Op. cit., hh. 207–208.

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serta “subject in transit” 14 ini sekaligus memperhalusi pernyataan “salah tafsir” di dalam ruang lingkup dengan lebih transformatif. Nah, ke mana bahasa membawa kita setelah itu?

Bahasa adalah manifestasi konflik dan pembentukan linguistiknya ialah sebuah kisah tragik perebutan sebuah akar makna. Apatah lagi jika kita sebagai aktor yang terlibat langsung dalam proses pengabsahan pembentukan linguistik melalui sudut pandang rakusnya radas sesebuah negara bangsa dalam mengakumulasi makna bahasa. Dalam hal ini, sifir mudah wacana negara bangsa dihafal dengan wujudnya andaian melalui dua kaedah untuk soal pengenalpastian: “positively by some common nature, identity, or interests; negatively by the differences with other nations”. 15 Lalu, aspek bahasa, lebih-lebih lagi jika kita mengambil logika sifir wacana negara bangsa yang dinyatakan seakan sukar untuk dipertahan hujahnya. Soal ini dibahas panjang oleh Gopal Balakrishnan di dalam eseinya berjudul “The National Imagination” bagi membidas idea “komuniti terbayang” oleh Benedict Anderson, khususnya dalam aspek bahasa sebagai susur-galur dan prinsip dalam wujud sesebuah negara bangsa. 16 Penekanan soal susurgalur bahasa ini jika dilanjutkan permasalahannya, khususnya bagaimana sesebuah bahasa itu direpresentasi melalui sudut pandang klasifikasi ideologikal, ambil contoh nasionalisme, pasti akan terbeban dengan kemungkinan runtuhnya ketuanan serta pemilikan terhadap sesebuah bahasa itu sendiri. Pertembungan yang seumpamanya akibat dari kontradiksi melalui peminggiran akan realiti serta kepastian sejarah yang pasti di mana wujudnya kerencaman proses pembinaan linguistik yang bukan dominan serta bersifat subaltern, sesederhana bagaimana seorang pekerja migran yang fasih menambah kosakata mongrel serta golongan diaspora yang basah lidahnya dengan kadang dua-tiga bahasa dalam merebut produksi makna serta epistemologi secara kolektif melangkaui bobrok sempadan negara bangsa.

Justeru, bahasa dengan segala keambivalenannya— dari persoalan seperti apakah bahasa ini untuk dibaca, didengar atau disentuh semata serta ruang pemaknaan dalam pembentukan linguistik yang “dihilangkan”, “ditemui” bahkan “dimusnahkan”—merupakan naluri ekspresi paling primitif buat setiap manusia menanggapi persekitarannya yang mengambil tempat akan posisionalitinya dalam detak dan bentuk sejarah yang tertentu.

Bahasa-(Bahasa)

“di tengah kota ada pasar dalam pasar ada orang pada orang ada bahasa – setiap orang punya bahasa – bahasa-bahasa suku-suku bangsa bertempur di tengah-tengah kota hingga lidah tergeliat bahasa terseliuh!”

— “sayur bahasa” oleh pyanhabib 17

17 Pyanhabib, Balada Pyanhabib (Kuala Lumpur: Institut Terjemahan & Buku Malaysia Berhad, 2012), h. 22.

Zikri Rahman seorang yang tegar menggerakkan kolaborasi bersama kelompok aktivis kebudayaan di dalam lingkungan sosio-politik. Buku Jalanan, sebuah gerak kerja literasi berasaskan komuniti yang dirintis secara bersama, merupakan jaringan longgar pekerja budaya dan ilmu memfokuskan desentralisasi produksi ilmu pengetahuan. Bergerak bak “rizom”, gerakan ini menyebar ke 90 buah lokasi dan digerakkan oleh ratusan pekerja budaya di seluruh dunia secara autonomi. Beliau juga merupakan pengarah festival Idearaya, sebuah festival idea yang julung kali dijalankan dengan tumpuan meraikan wacana progresif melibatkan kelompok akar umbi, dari cendekiawan, masyarakat madani, serta penggerak masyarakat di Asia Tenggara. Melalui LiteraCity, beliau memulakan sebuah projek pemetaan sastera budaya kota Kuala Lumpur. Kini sedang menjalankan pengajian pascasarjana bidang Kajian Sosial dan Pengajian Budaya di Taiwan, Zikri juga merupakan seorang penulis, penyelidik mandiri, penterjemah, serta podcaster bagi beberapa portal atas talian.

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Zikri Rahman

Artworks

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20

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Susur, Galur, dan Bahasa Melayu 2017 Mixed media on paper 35 Ă— 61 cm

22

TOP

Addressing Home 2017 Print on paper 17 × 86 cm BOTTOM

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Unaddressing Home 2017 Print on paper 17 × 86 cm

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Addressing Home (detail) 2017 Print on paper 17 Ă— 86 cm

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Unaddressing Home (detail) 2017 Print on paper 17 Ă— 86 cm

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Bhāsā Jīva Vam · śa 2017 Spray-painted fibreglass 51.5 × 53 × 15 cm Edition of 3

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Writing is a Strange Thing 2017 Mixed media on metal plate 35.7 Ă— 23 cm each Edition of 5

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Clowning/Crowning 2017 Mixed media on metal plate 35.7 Ă— 23 cm each Edition of 5

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The Danger of Translation Lies in That Which is Left Untranslated 2014 Mixed media on metal plate 35.7 Ă— 23 cm each Edition of 5

a/āgama 2017 Mixed media installation 157 × 50 × 135 cm

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a/āgama (detail) 2017 Mixed media installation 157 × 50 × 135 cm

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LEFT

The Unholy Trio 2017 Mixed media installation 135 × 15 × 15 cm RIGHT

The Unholy Trio (detail) 2017 Mixed media installation 135 × 15 × 15 cm

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LEFT

T.K. 2017 Mixed media on galvanized iron sheet with metal framework 165 Ă— 70 cm RIGHT

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That Which Exploits, Unites 2017 Mixed media on galvanized iron sheet with metal framework 180 Ă— 55 cm

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Minorities for the Masses 2017 Mixed media on galvanized iron sheet with metal framework 155 Ă— 131 cm

Negaraku. Bukan. My Country. Is Not. 我的 祖国。不是 。

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Menuaku. Ukai. Pogunku. Au. 2014 Single-channel video 1’29”

ਮੇਰਾ ਦੇਸ਼. ਨਾ.

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The Mahathir Dilemma 2015 Grease pencil on printed paper 21 Ă— 13.5 cm each

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The Mahathir Dilemma (detail) 2015 Grease pencil on printed paper 21 Ă— 13.5 cm each

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The Mahathir Dilemma (detail) 2015 Grease pencil on printed paper 21 Ă— 13.5 cm each

Artist Profile

Tan Zi Hao (b. 1989, Kuala Lumpur) is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist who works predominantly in installation and performance art. He has degrees in Cultural Studies and International Relations from the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. His artistic practice is often informed by the contested politics of identities vis-à-vis the nation-state, and revolves around the potentials of encountering otherness foreclosed by socio-political categories. His preoccupation is manifested in subjects as diverse as language politics, multilingualism, etymology, postcolonial historiographies, mythical composite creatures, and organic assemblages from carrier shells (Xenophora pallidly) to household casebearers (Phereoeca uterella). Aside from being an artist, Zi Hao is also the founder and editor of Students in Resistance, a quarterly zine committed to exploring under-discussed topics in Malaysia’s political discourse. His recent exhibitions include ILHAM Contemporary Forum (Malaysia 2009–2017), Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 2017; Singapore Biennale: An Atlas of Mirrors, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, 2016–2017; OFFART: An Experiment with Flies and Farts, PORT commune, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, 2015.

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EDUCATION 2 015–present PhD Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore 2 014–2 015 MA International Relations, The University of Nottingham, Malaysia 2012–2013 BA International Communications Studies, The University of Nottingham, Malaysia 2007–2009 Diploma in Advertising & Graphic Design, The One Academy, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2 017 Kadang Kadang Dekat Dekat Akan Datang, A+ WORKS of ART, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia ILHAM Contemporary Forum (Malaysia 2009–2017), Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Man&God Bangkok, Tribes Community, Bangkok, Thailand 2 016

Singapore Biennale: An Atlas of Mirrors, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore

Remembrance as Resistance: Human Rights Art Exhibition @Johor 記憶 即 使 反 抗：人權 藝 術展 , Let’s Art Sawit Centre, Kulai, Malaysia

Tan Zi Hao

2 015

OFFART: An Experiment with Flies and Farts by Leo So and Tan Zi Hao, PORT commune, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Dia-Spora, Festival Idearaya, Shah Alam, Malaysia

South by Southeast, Osage Gallery, Kowloon, Hong Kong (www. frombandungtoberlin.com) 我 不屬於 , Galleria H 恆 畫 廊 ,

Taipei, Taiwan (as Typokaki) 2 014 From Bandung to Berlin, Foundation Cartier, Paris, France

Eating Wind, VT Art Salon 非常廟 藝文 空間 , Taipei, Taiwan 89Plus: Commentary, 72–13, Singapore

The Good Malaysian Woman: Ethnicity, Religion, Politics, Black Box, Publika, Solaris Dutamas, Malaysia (as Typokaki) GANGGUAN, 67 Tempinis Gallery, Bangsar, Malaysia 2 013

Eating Wind, Run Amok Gallery, Penang, Malaysia

Creative©ities, Kaohsiung Design Festival 2013, Pier 2 Art Centre, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan

Man&God, Pearlfisher’s Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Gerai Commemorative Crap Endless Possibilities 1Malaysia, Publika, Solaris Dutamas, Malaysia

Art for Grabs, Annexe Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Barricade: 7th Kuala Lumpur Triennial, Publika, Solaris Dutamas, Malaysia

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2011

Kata-Kita, Publika, Solaris Dutamas, Malaysia

Buka Jalan, National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2 010

Buka Mulut, Dave’s Pizza Restaurant, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Urbanscapes, KLPAC, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

NOW, Starhill Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Deadlines, Annexe Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Seksualiti Merdeka: Portraits of the Unspoken, Annexe Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Man&God 11th International Visual Feast, Pier 2 Art Centre, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan

CURATORIAL ACTIVITIES 2 013 沒 有魚，蝦 也好 / No fish, prawn

also can / Ikan tak ada, udang pun boleh, shu@ChaiDiamMa, Penang, Malaysia (with TypoKaki) 2010

Critical Objects, Dasein Gallery, Dasein Academy of Art, Malaysia (with Dr. Koh Doh Tat and Jean Wong)

Cerita Ori: Heritage of the Peninsula’s Original Peoples, Annexe Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2008

Projek Semai, Pusat Penjagaan Kanak-kanak Wawas Tinggi, Seri Kembangan, Malaysia

2009

TOSCA Show, TOA Gallery, The One Academy, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Cutie Cultie, TOA Gallery, The One Academy, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Graduation Showcase, TOA Gallery, The One Academy, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 2008

The Merdeka Visualogue, The Gardens, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Entry Points, 1948 Art Space, Seri Kembangan, Malaysia

F&N Unity Mural, KLCC Foyer, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Artist Profile

Acknowledgements

A+ WORKS of ART and Tan Zi Hao would like to thank: Eddin Khoo Joshua Lim Kenta Chai Lee Weng Choy Leo So Lyn Ong Muhamad Razif Nasruddin Nikki Ong Okui Lala Poodien Poon Li-Wei Rachel Ng Family of Tan Zi Hao Vincent Leong Wang Jiabao Wong Hoy Cheong Zikri Rahman

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A+ WORKS of ART is a contemporary art gallery based in Kuala Lumpur. Founded in 2017, A+ WORKS of ART strives to engage contemporary practices and discussions in new media art, especially photography, video, installation, and performance art. While the main geographic scope of the gallery is Malaysia and the rest of Southeast Asia, it keeps its ears attuned to global conversations on social issues, critical imagination and material experimentation.

Collaboration is A+ WORKS of ART's key ethos, based on the belief that wonderful things can happen when people share and exchange ideas. Artists working with the gallery are not so much represented by it but are engaged in an ongoing conversation and collaboration. Likewise, curators, writers, collectors, and galleries are welcome to initiate conversations about potential collaborations. The name, A+, refers then not just to the gallery’s strive for distinction and professionalism in its services and working processes, but also a sense of readiness to start a dialogue with any interested party.

Founded by Joshua Lim, who has decades of experience in the hospitality industry, A+ WORKS of ART represents a natural progression for the avid art lover. Lim has been an art supporter for the past decade through his ongoing art acquisition and his promotion of contemporary art in his network.

Address, Alamat

Acknowledgements

A+ WORKS of ART and Tan Zi Hao would like to thank: Eddin Khoo Joshua Lim Kenta Chai Lee Weng Choy Leo So Lyn Ong Muhamad Razif Nasruddin Nikki Ong Okui Lala Poodien Poon Li-Wei Rachel Ng Family of Tan Zi Hao Vincent Leong Wang Jiabao Wong Hoy Cheong Zikri Rahman

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Installation shots by KuwaKenta

Tan Zi Hao