Another diverse issue awaits your joy and delectation, bringing arts from across Asia. Inclusive too of South Africa, as part of an occasional series of arts and artists from the African continent.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Submissions regarding Asian arts and cultures are encouraged to be sent to martinabradley@gmail.com for consideration.
An international exhibiting creator, Malaysian Chinese Maxine Xie Xian Xin was born in multicultural Malaysia. She has travelled through Asia and Europe, exhibiting her unique works in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, South Korea, The Netherlands, and The Philippines.
Maxine is a rare commodity, being one of the very few female sculptors working in Malaysia. She is proud to have been trained in the prestigious Malaysian Kuala Lumpur College of Art (founded in 1968 by local artist and educator Cheah Yew Saik) from 1978 to 1980 when she obtained her Diploma in Art & Design.
Maxine was fortunate in coming from a creative family. In interviews she has mentioned that…
“My parents were creative and resourceful. My dad was a carpenter and built sets for TV and movie shoots. My mom could weave rattan seats and does fine lacquer works. There were always an ever ready supply of material in my fathers’ workshop , just like a candy store to every child...dig in ! That’s what I did....curious and ever ready to lay my hands on creating stuff. There were tins of paint of all colours, all kinds of cast off materials, from timber to steel, tools and machineries of all kinds.”
Maxine is an accomplished artist, sometimes a draughts person, a contemporary painter and a sculptor. She is known for her poignant
meditations on textures and objects as a prelude to revealing characteristics and beauties discovered within the materials she works alongside.
Maxine has drawn her inspiration from her travels and sojourns in Europe, specifically the Netherlands, and her time in the UK (home of great British female sculptors such as like Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink and Kim Lim).
Barbara Hepworth, one of Britain’s finest sculptors has mentioned that…
“Carving to me is more interesting than modelling, because there is an unlimited variety of materials from which to draw inspiration. Each material demands a particular treatment and there are an infinite number of subjects in life each to be re-created in a particular material. In fact, it would be possible to carve the same subject in a different stone each time, throughout life, without a repetition of form.
If a pebble or an egg can be enjoyed for the sake of its shape only, it is one step towards a true appreciation of sculpture. A tree trunk, with its changing axis, swellings and varied sections, fully understood, takes us a step further. Then finally it is realised that abstract form, the relation of masses and planes, is that which gives sculptural life; this, then, admits that a piece of sculpture can be purely abstract or non-representational.”
Undauntable, found objects, 2019
(Extract from Hepworth’s statement in the series ‘Contemporary English Sculptors’, The Architectural Association Journal, London, vol. XLV, no. 518, April 1930, p. 384)
Like Hepworth, Maxine’s works align with the idiosyncrasies of Surrealism and Dada, yet has no affiliations with those movements. Instead she is inspired by, and greatly admires, life’s imperfections, or rather the perfection of imperfections.
Maxine admires the Japanese notion of ‘Wabi Sabi’ which has roots within Zen Buddhism (i.e. finding beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness) and the Cha No Yu, or the tea ceremony from fifteenth-century Japan. Research reveals that..
“Wabi-Sabi, a traditional Japanese aesthetic,
is often described as the beauty found in imperfection and transience. The term often leaves those unfamiliar with Japanese culture in a mild state of perplexity. It isn’t just an aesthetic but a perspective, a way to view the world, which focuses on simplicity, modesty, and appreciating the integrity of natural objects and processes. “
(Martin Gottschlich in Wabi-Sabi and Yakisugi: A Harmony of Imperfection and Elegance https:// nakamotoforestry.eu)
Maxine uses many different materials within her creative processes. Depending on the material’s suitability for the project she might use Acrylics; Bronze; Ceramic; Chrome; Clay; Copper; Found Objects (recycled); Granite; Mixed Media; Oils; Parcel Tape; Plaster of Paris; Resin; Sandstone; Terracotta; Tree Trunk; Wood and/or any other admixture of materials
Body Bag, found object, 2018
Self portrait - male, Bisqueware, 2023
Self portrait - female, Bisqueware, 2023
Cheese, marble, 2021
which ‘bring forth’ objects, paintings or drawings from that memory ‘gestation’.
This ‘Blue Lotus magazine’ issue’s cover (no.68) is the rear of Maxine’s sculpture ‘Undauntable’ (2019), and was created with ‘recycled’ or ‘found objects’ (in the Dada tradition and recalling Raoul Hausmann’s ‘Mechanischer Kopf/Der Geist unserer Zeit’ or ‘Spirit of the Age: Mechanical Head’, 1919). Maxine’s work includes a mannequin, white on the front, and black on the back, plastic toy soldiers and swimming goggles.
Maxine is not all intellect and no humour. One of my favourite Maxine sculptures is the 2024 ‘found’ piece - a tree truck from which she has fashioned a flat wooden fish, called ‘WTF - What the Fish”. Others include re-purposed saw-blades, painted red, as ‘Hen Party’; an entirely wooden ‘The MM BarkinTree Trunk Bag’, or marble cut to become ‘Cheese’ or, there again, her concrete black swim-suit titled ‘Bitch Wear’ 2017. Maxine, though entirely dedicated to her creativity, is not shy to lampoon.
Ed
Bitch Wear, concrete, 2017
Corset, concrete, 2017
The artist at work
Much-rooms to let, artificial coral reefs, concrete. A Community-Based Tourism project by National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 2022
Material Encounters with
Bishwajit Goswami
Highlighting the stories of informal waste workers who form a vital- yet invisible- part of the plastic recycling industry in Old Dhaka, Material Encounters offers an intimate way to connect with artist Bishwajit Goswami’s পদ্ম / PODDO (LOTUS) series and the communities it honours.
Participants were invited to experience art as a bridge between conversation, observation, and creation at Brihatta Art Space, Hazaribagh, as it delicately unfolds in two connected parts (same day):
1. Artist Talk & Guided Tour – Bishwajit shared a deep insight into creative processes behind পদ্ম / PODDO (LOTUS) as part of his ongoing Hazaribagh (A Thousand Gardens) project. His work reflects on resilience, memory, and transformation through the lived experiences of migrant women engaged in the informal recycling trade in Old Dhaka. Participants would have the opportunity to encounter the art pieces in situ, hearing firsthand how recycled materials, found objects, and natural elements become vessels of memory and possibility.
2. Hands-on Material Encounter – Participants were invited to explore and experiment with recycled materials similar to those in পদ্ম /
PODDO (LOTUS). This open, participatory space allowed for shaping, assembling, and re-imagining—echoing the project’s themes of reuse, adaptation, and collective creativity. Active participation was optional; observation was equally welcome.
Format & Duration
1st Session: was at 4-7pm, 30 August 2025
2nd Session: was at 4-7pm, 31 August 2025
*All materials were provided by Brihatta Art Foundation.
**Suitable for all ages; no prior experience required.
***Advance registration required (for both days) due to limited capacity.
পদ্ম
Eric Clark’s ASIA
Eric Clark was born and raised in California (USA).
He has always had an interest in photography and was active photographing as a young man.
Fifteen years ago, in an age of computers and digital technology, Eric resumed that put-aside interest.
As a teenager, Eric had spent a year in India as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in the then Mysore State (now Karnataka) India. He had also stayed with a local Muslim family in Bangalore for a period. Those experiences gave him a lifelong interest in South & Southeast Asia, which has continued to this day.
Sudhir Patwardhan
Sudhir Patwardhan
By Arshia Dhar
23 February 2022
Sudhir Patwardhan's new show speaks of the anxieties of an existentialist artist.
Sudhir Patwardhan's art, more often than not, inspires equal parts wonderment and terror when the workings of everyday life are thrown into sharp relief on his hyper-realist canvas. At his newest show, ‘Portraits of an Existentialist Artist’ at New Delhi's Vadehra Art Gallery, Patwardhan employs a deeply personal lens of anguish and frustration—experienced over the past two calamitous years—to depict the creative process of an artist whose “passions of anxiety, inextricable from creative impulses in the studio, are transformed into fierce acts of vexation”.
Quite appropriately, this series of paintings done in 2021—a mix of acrylic on canvas and coloured paper—has been termed as revealing the “underbelly” of the artistic process, one that goes largely unseen. The imageries sink into nihilistic despair, but paradoxically, also rise above it to present a glimmering hope for what lies after a spell of destruction.
The artist speaks to AD India about the exhibition and how it dives into the depths of his reflections in the past year.
Your idiom this time is that of destruction brought about by an existential artist to his work. How much of what you’ve portrayed on canvas did you personally
go through or witness in the past two years?
The last two years have been a strange period for all of us. I have gone through different moods in this period. The work is fed by some of the darker moods. But what is portrayed is a metaphor for wider questions of the relevance of art.
The juxtaposition of creation born of destruction in this series of paintings, and vice versa, struck as interesting to me. As an artist, how much of what you create is born from debris of what you reject? Is destruction as important to your artistic process as your creation?
The creative process is a series of choices, in which one is choosing and/or rejecting options. In that sense rejection is part of the process. If you allow a work to proceed on wrong choices, then the need for destruction can arise. On another level you may want to destroy because you want to reject the system in which the work is located. The paintings Clay and Tools especially stood out for me. While the former for the bestial nature of the face it depicts, and the latter for the disembodied head floating above a skeletal man lying supine. Could you tell us a little more about these art works?
These works focus on the medium and the tools of art. Before the artist can create anything he is confronted by the raw materials and tools of his trade. In Clay the potter facing the clay
Nullah
Bylanes-Saga
lying on the wheel is as if questioned by the clay speaking in Kabir's words. Who do you think is the creator? Ek din aisa aayega, main raundugi toye. On the other hand in Tools it is as if Vishwkarma, the God of craftsmen, is imploring the diffident and defeated artist to return to work.
As the exhibition note says, you've departed from the "familiar contours of dominant realist language for powerful expressionism". Why did you choose to do so?
I have always been drawn to an expressionist language, especially in my drawings. These works follow that strain. The two 'War' works however return to a more classical-realist manner.
How do you personally deal with feelings of anguish and inadequacy with your art?
The current body of work is in fact an answer to that question. This is how I deal with it. The exhibition, titled ‘Portraits of an Existentialist Artist’, reveals the inner workings of a creative mind trapped in the loop of a circumstantial and existential crisis.
A Normal Day
Erase
Night bite-1
Park Life
Lawrence Pettener
The man running backwards hasn’t seen me, so I clear my bike and myself off to the side. It’s only as I come back that way some minutes later, when I see him flailing his arms in another exercise, that I realise how old he may well be — even allowing for my Western/Asian age estimation factor, he’s probably 83–85, or possibly even older. I wish it really was like this in my local park every morning, with Bollywood music as well!
I only learned to guess people’s ages here after my first year or eighteen months; I would’ve placed people at a good twenty years younger than they are; not the teens of course — they would then have minus numbers. Not that absurd things don’t happen in Malaysia.
It’s seven am on a weekday, and there are four or five different groups in session. There’s linedancing, Tai Chi, Qigong (two groups), yoga, plus individual practitioners of everything else. There’s a small group planting a tree or two.
There are pebble reflexology paths in all Selangor parks, it seems. There’s proper stretch and exercise equipment too — you don’t see that in all developed Western countries. If UK parks had these, they’d be vandalised in most neighbourhoods, including areas where visitors would tell me folks have nothing to complain about.
If UK parks had free electricity points for everyone, they’d be in hot demand, with queues of folks feuding over who was there first and how long they could charge their phones for. Long weekends would mean bass beats and parties
through till late Sunday night, if not perpetually.
One modest local park personality is Swee Lee An — not her real name — who joins in with line dancing just as devotedly as she teaches tai chi to middle-aged women, mainly — with a massive smile. She can high-kick to heaven, and get down deep into lunges too. She’s the only one who can dip right down through the “Snake Creeps Down” move of Tai Chi (She Shen Xia Shi, 蛇身下势) and come up again holding grace in her fist, smiling. She’s in her early eighties.
I asked her one day, “How is your health?” She came straight back with: “I’m just as you see me.” And she is.
Talking to frequent park users, several drive in from outlying areas in the south of the Klang Valley. They’re consciously choosing a park that offers around 85% shade, as opposed to the shiny new ones whose trees are too young and too few to offer much respite. It’s on these sorts of days, described locally as perfect — the sun firmly hidden behind the clouds — that I notice the occasional youngster circling the park’s perimeter with a parasol hoisted high. I don’t know why; do tell me if you know!
Parklife was also the title of the album by UK band Blur which sealed their success forever, and dried up Oasis temporarily too. I mention it mainly to drop a name here like a clanger, or a Klanger: Clive Brunskill, a school friend of mine, was the photographer whose greyhound-racing pic was picked for the cover of the iconic album. I prompted him for his first ever date! I digress.
Photo - Taman Wawasan by Martin Bradley
Re-reading Tim Liardet in a Tropical Climate:
Intro
Asian people are, understandably, alienated from the natural environment far more even than I think Westerners are; there’s so much more to get sick and die from here, so much more to fear. For that reason, I imagine, none of my in-law’s generation, in their seventies now, can tell me the name of what I call the mango bird, the one in the Brazil football shirt.
I’m told by a British woman who’s been living in Malaysia over forty years, that the mango bird is correctly known as the black-necked oriole, and that the electric blue/turquoise one is the white-throated kingfisher. If somebody could tell me why both of these birds are named for their throat and neck areas rather than their far larger, amazing bodies, I ‘d be very interested to know!
One Malaysian friend told me that my midtwenties writing sojourn in the wilds of southern Spain’s Andalusia region — no toilet, electricity, or roads, water from a spring, wood stove at night — sounded like something worthy of writing about. Hmm — I can see why Asians would think so. It was quite unconventional and non-ambitious. I was there to write; I didn’t think it, in itself, would become the subject of some later writing; though I had read US Beat poet/novelist Jack Kerouac’s ‘Big Sur’ in my teens, about his log cabin time at the Californian coast.
It was not only doable, but hugely enjoyable, entirely because of the kind Mediterranean climate — mostly warm, sometimes hot; never humid and clammy. It was much cooler — cold, even — late at night and early in the morning. Again, I think the main reason my sojourn is newsworthy in Malaysia is that Asians are necessarily alienated from their killer environments. Fear has a function.
The following poem is a sort of reply to London poet Tim Liardet’s piece, Re-Reading Lolita in a Tropical Climate, in case you were wondering at
some of my allusions. Tim was my main poetry tutor for the Creative Writing MA and the degree at Bath Spa University, UK.
Re-reading Tim Liardet’s Poems in a Tropical Climate
The habitat mocks my alfresco penchant: fire ants piercing page fifty-six with the twisted scrawl of their Palatino; mosquitoes munching at covers and calves (even with my wife as decoy); park grounds that swamp; and whatever rustles beneath. Here nature is not your given friend as on UK summer mornings; I’d give it ten weeks to jungle over. We use parasols and Panadol, a timer for exposure, and cover up with creams against killer insects. Death rates swell. No wonder no-one here can name my “mango birds” in their yellow Brazil shirts, the sheeny ultramarine turquoise ones or those upside-down umbrella trees. There’s nothing sexy here for humans save efficient muscles, quickened panting, page-turning shrieks at the work of fire ants.
I like the following poem if I say so myself, but mainly because I love the one that inspired it (link below), as outlined in the poem’s strapline. I may even put mine in a forthcoming post where it would fit in again — wait and see — for the same reason. Who reads poems anyway? Us poets have to put our work in yer face when we can, I think, if only to burn the notion into the pop mindset, that poetry is much closer to hiphop than it is to hopeless flowers and endless sunrises, or vice-versa.
Contentedness
(A version of Raymond Carver’s Happiness) So early, the sun hasn’t gripped. I’m out for the morning walk with my mind and its regular dull buzz. I spot the two surviving kittens and their mother, plus the mangy grandma cat coming slowly down the alley. They’re all short fur of different colours. One’s a cream Burmese.
They are so contented they aren’t making any sound, these kittens. I think if I wasn’t here, they would twine each other’s tails. It’s earlier than tropical heat, and they are doing this thing together. They come on, in cat time. The sky is taking on colour, though the moon still rests lightly on the park. Such brilliance that for this minute plans and regrets, even truth don’t come into this. Contentedness. It comes on with no push. And pads beyond, really, any waking thoughts about it.
I flinch almost visibly when I hear the conjunction ‘So’ used to start a conversation; here it is as an intensifier:
So Here So here –here in the staunching daylight of the KL forenoon, too much even for mad dogs and white ghosts when the sun’s full on; here in the standstill strike of it, you thrive yourself outwards, merge with unmentionable sun. Squirrels squirrel forth, churning it up, this undivided knowing — tree and branch and the holding ground; no preconceptions. Just so here.
Park Life 2: A Walk in the Park
There are no signs up in any language telling the early risers to walk and jog round the park in one direction only, and yet most people obey. I suppose it might stem the flow unnecessarily to go the other way. It might be something to do with energy as well. It's always anti-clockwise, in case you were wondering.
All these early folks are walking their hopes, their fears, their openness around the park, starting their day in open vulnerability. The glass isn’t half empty or half full, it’s just there, as a lens
through which we can view humanity. The day is becoming charged, and it’s basically good!
Business partners are generating ideas together as they pace in pairs, discussing money heatedly (it’s not just Arcadia), solo exercisers are getting their rounds done in a furious hurry, some of them. Watch out anyone who gets in their way. Others move more slowly, as that’s the implicit invitation.
UK parks have none of this early-morning bustle. Not even the busy commuters release such cries or twist their arms in front of them, as some local people do. I’m sure they’re shaking out all their tensions, thereby improving their daily interactions. Anyone moving like this in UK parks would become known affectionately –and condescendingly – as freaks, outsiders.
Some views of a park almost force you to slow down and take it all in; other stretches feature people getting past you awkwardly, or viceversa. It’s all grist for the mill (or mist for the grill, just to spoon a vague food reference in).
Several years ago I accidentally became Malaysia’s first practitioner and assistant instructor of one variety of Qigong in one such neighbourhood park.
The technique started with Madame Guo Lin, a 60s Beijing artist who adapted existing forms of Qigong to reverse her own Stage 4 cancer, and then taught it to fellow sufferers, in parks. There’s plenty of information about it on the Internet, under Guo Lin Qigong. The form she pioneered survived the Cultural Revolution, and is now taught by the Chinese government.
The instructions for walking practice are detailed and numerous. Unlike regular walking, the arms both move on the same side of the body. Then there’s step counting, tongue placement, breathing instructions and head movements. Though it sounds complicated, it’s all about relaxation. If you’re musical, there’s a tangible connection to the 4/4 beat. Meditators may have
held the tongue placement before.
This is nothing like Qigong as I knew it in Europe, or thought I did. There, we lined up facing the teacher and copied their movements. We stayed more or less on one spot where we stood, and it was seen as a general tonic, less focussed on specific ailments.
Guo Lin Qigong gradually becomes a daily practice, a meeting with nature. For me, it’s an honour not only to be accepted as the only Kwai lo practising the technique, but also as a practitioner. What really helped me a lot was seeing Ed, my Sifu or teacher, enjoy the practice. He wasn’t smiling, but his body was – held lightly, open to the experience, with lithe, catlike movements. Without such regal relaxation, it could easily be robotic and stiff, blocking circulation. You can see relaxation or otherwise in how somebody holds themselves.
Though I’ve felt the tingling of Chi before in Tai Chi and yoga practice, it’s nonetheless special for all that. I no longer practise the technique, but it was definitely an honour to have been accepted into the practice. I was told that locals were watching me; they must have been doing it subtly!
When science does eventually explain Chi it will still be everyday magic, as it is so accessible.
(This material first appeared in Malaysian news aggregator newswav.com.)
Photo - Taman Wawasan by Martin Bradley
Seema Kohli
Come Play With Me
Seema Kohli
Seema Kohli is a multi - disciplinary artist, straddling the worlds the visual and performing arts, as well as poetry. Her works are primarily a celebration of the female form, often with the underlying subtext and central themes of myth and oral narratives. A contemporary chronicler of ancient myths, Kohli explores themes of beauty, sensuality and spirituality. Her compositions and intricate detailing render a fantastical, supernatural world. Employing the fundamental tenets of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism and Greek mythology, she emphasizes the cyclicality of existence and the rejuvenation of life through the unending processes of birth, death and rebirth. A visual storyteller, she weaves stories that are deeply personal, yet universal.
Kohli has had over 32 solo shows and over 250 group shows in India, Europe, and the United States. In addition, Kohli has done several large - scale murals, some of which include the Supreme Court (New Delhi), Sardar Patel Bhawan (Patna, Bihar), Delhi and Mumbai International Airports and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her works have also been shown at collateral events associated with major national and international festivals including the Kochi - Muziris Biennale (2016), Venice Biennale of Art/Architecture (2015, 2016), ARCO [Madrid] (2008), Art Basel, and at the India Art Fair (2010 - 2021), among many others. Kohli has also been an invited speaker at several conferences and institutions, including TEDx (2012), WIN Conference (2013 - 2015), NGMA (Bangalore, 2010, 2014, 2016), Harvard University, University of California at Davis, University of Chicago, University of Connecticut and the University of Buffalo. Kohli’s artworks are currently in several prestigious collections including the Rubin Museum (USA), the Museum of Sacred Art (Belgium), Lalit Kala Akademi (India) and the Kerala Museum of Arts (India).
Reverence to Lal Ded
The Continuation Of The Life-Rhythm
Persephone
Buraq
Walk the Path Of Wind And Water (The Golden Womb Series),
moist
A book in parts by Martin Bradley
moist
A book in parts by Martin Bradley
KL (Irene)
Brian Holland has, slowly, become familiar with the swelteringly moist city of Kuala Lumpur. He has become resigned to the many colonial buildings facing down the tropical sun, giving shade to heat-ridden pedestrians beneath their well-formed arches.
Carefully crafted brick pushes up and carves majestic places within the city’s skyline but, increasingly monstrous office buildings and newly made Art Brut architecture have begun to overshadow those previously glorious edifices of Indo-Saracenic design.
Sadly, in a city where little architecture is aged, many older buildings have been savagely torn down to make way for the newer and most unremarkable rectangular structures.
In place of graceful colonial buildings, Malaysia has raced with Dubai, Taiwan and China (and lost), to house the world’s tallest buildings. Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Twin Towers now rank ninth and tenth respectively in the height stakes, risen on that city’s skyline like some elderly aunt’s forgotten knitting needles.
In Kuala Lumpur, other architectural additions smack of the modernity that is painting the city with a shock of the new. It has been a confused city, not totally Eastern but not entirely Western. Kuala Lumpur seems to be caught between McDonalds on the one hand, and a former Prime Minister’s ‘Look East’ policy on the other.
Brian has languished a few months in Kuala Lumpur, amidst the heat and the traffic fumes. He’s been trying to discover the authenticity which he knows is there, but which seems to lay just beyond his reach. He drags his moist body to and from the local light rail transit system (LRT) at Bangsar, and heads for heritage buildings
which, on discovery, have been rendered to rubble. Giving up, Brain has sought the ex-pat haven of Bukit Bintang (aka Star Hill) and other malls in and around that city.
In the older malls of Bukit Bintang, like Sungei Wang Plaza, Brain Holland purchases less-thanlegal DVDs of films or TV series he only vaguely wants to watch. He scowls when they either don’t work, or of such poor quality that he’d be better off just giving his money away to one of the many street beggars around KL’s China Town. His lessons are slow to learn. The LRT and the Monorail keep him busy.
Somewhere, at the back of Brian’s still very Western mind, is a nagging thought “surely this isn’t all there is”. He remembers, from earlier visits, that there’s a whole country out there somewhere. In the states of Kedah, Perak and Pahang there are jungles, forests, parks, and cooling, tumbling, waterfalls with large rocks to lay upon in the excitement of rurality. He knows that Kuala Lumpur is not the sum totality of Malaysia.
When he gathers enough courage, Brian loans a car (an old Malaysian-made Proton Wira) and begins to drive. Driving in Kuala Lumpur isn’t quite as daunting as he’d first thought. However, Brian does have to throw away any notion of a British Highway Code and, instead, watches and learns how the locals behave on the roads, then follows suit.
The concept of lanes, queuing, and signalling seems to be as equally foreign as is the concept of giving way. Though Malaysia is not quite as bad as India with its every man for himself and cows are king (queen?). However ‘might is right’ does seem to be the Kuala Lumpur street mantra.
In Malaysia, the bigger the vehicle the more respect you seem to get.
Brian soon discovers that motorcycles deserved little respect. In the Malaysian traffic mindset two-wheeled motorised vehicles are but mechanised insects, whereas pedestrians have even less rights on Malaysian roads than motorcyclists, which is to say that they have none whatsoever. Malaysian roads are designed for motorised four-wheeled vehicles not, emphasise not, for people who cannot or will not protect themselves with copious amounts of metal and power.
Frequent road diversions lead Brian away from the main parts of the city and its one-way systems. He frequently gets lost and finds himself literally miles from where he’d expected to be. The plus side of being lost is that he ‘discovers’ completely new areas of Kuala Lumpur.
Eventually, with the tarnished penny slowly sinking in, Brian realises that all roads lead not to Rome, but to Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC). With that realisation, getting lost is no longer a chore. Brian saunters away his days swimming along the one way system, traversing the highways and byways and still, eventually, heads back to the small section of Kuala Lumpur where he has been laying his head.
Brian has discovered that Kuala Lumpur has many notorious areas, but none as notorious as Lorong Haji Taib in the Chow Kit area.
Chow Kit was named after the wealthy Chinese tin entrepreneur Loke Chow Kit. Yet the Chow Kit area has become famed for a certain type of purveyor of the world’s oldest profession. Because a conventional work environment had been frequently hostile, sex working has become one of the few opportunities for marginalised types of humanity to feed themselves.
Brian has never been in Chow Kit in the evenings – that’s when the sex workers ply their trade. Walking around Chow Kit in the mornings Brian notices the ‘girls’ easing out of the night and into the (for them) early mornings. At nine, or ten am, they are like freshly awoken cats stretching and yawning on their doorsteps as Brian passes. They are barely able to purr a good morning, but attempt to anyway as they seek to light their first fags of the day.
Brian waves a cheery wave to them – from the opposite side of the road - as there’s no need to get the ladies’ hopes up so early in their collective mornings.
Brian likes the way the rail system cuts through the traffic build-ups and eases the parking problem. He’s found many places are accessible using the rail systems. He’s also noticed that there are short walks where he can link one system with another. The concept of linking different rail systems together via networked tunnels seems a little alien in Malaysia, as opposed to London’s sublimely networked ‘Tube’.
Many of KL’s malls are outside of the LRT/ Monorail systems, and only accessible via taxi or private vehicle. With Brian’s sense of direction they are quite beyond him. One, a slightly older mall – the Mid-Valley Megamall, built in the same year as the Suria KLCC (1999) is accessible via a train link (KLM) from KL Sentral, also via bus link from Bangsar LRT station. It has become a cool haven for Brian.
Ultimately, there is only so much citywatching he can achieve before the streets begin to pall, and getting lost looses its charm while the delights of the city leave him, not cold, for he is never cold, but wishing that he could see green, smell unpolluted air and hear less traffic.
The move from the quite expensive Bangsar apartment to a larger, but cheaper, one in Wangsa Maju is, relatively, plain sailing and much needed to give Brian a fresher perspective on life. He has little to transport, so moving-in is easy.
Wangsa Maju (translates as Advanced Dynasty) is suburbia, and about nine and a half miles from Brian’s previous lodgings at Bangsar. Wangsa Maju is not so posh. There’s no lift to the third floor, so Brian has to lug everything up flights of stairs. It’s an older ‘apartment’ with much more character than his previous ‘holiday let’, and not so rectangular either. However, it’s not so convenient for shops or LRT either. But it is cheaper.
At times (when he can get a taxi to the station) Brian takes the LRT (Light Rail Transit) from Wangsa Maju, on the Kelana Jaya Line, to Masjid Jamek (it translates as ‘mosque of congregation’ and was built in 1909, by Sultan Abdul Samad). From there it’s possible to walk along the riverside path towards Chinatown and Pasar Seni (Central Market, built in1888 as a wet market before the arts and crafts came along ‘Pasar’- market, ‘Seni’ - art).
Having endured the ritual of dousing himself with lukewarm water, scrubbing with a morsel of Brian’s favourite soap (Mysore Sandal), today he is eventually dressed in a slightly crumpled
Marks and Sparks lightweight cotton shirt (he has no iron), donned a pair of cheap chinos and is acquainting himself with another area of Kuala Lumpur.
Brian ambles through the bustling, and very popular, tourist spot - Petaling Street. He’s trying to dodge energetic hawkers of illicit CD, DVDs, fake Rolex watches, pure sham Armani, or Dolce Gabbana purveyors, and beggars,. Having failed miserably to cross the street on foot (to get to the Kompleks Kota Raya), Brian is forced to cross the dusty, franticly busy main road via a rusty, flaking bridge. He steps around the indigent sleepers to take refuge from the day’s heat in a beckoning ZUS Coffee coffee-house.
That ZUS Coffee is Brian’s oasis amidst the desert of central Kuala Lumpur’s chaos. He’s in need of the familiarity of that establishment to gather his thoughts. He wants somewhere even vaguely familiar to consider his exile, and his distance from the refuge and sanctity of his Blicton-on-Sea home (now no longer his incidentally). Brian orders a familiar ‘Flat White’ from a charmingly young barista who smiles a warm, but nevertheless professional, smile at him. Brian crumples his lips in an automatic returning smile.
Seated in furniture which pretends to be a club chair, for a moment Brian wrestles with a scuffed paperback book. It’s an old Penguin edition of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf (the one with the Paul Klee cover ‘Portrait of a Yellow Man’, 1921). The book’s pages are yellowing, dusty, and threaten his sinuses, hence secreting the book within his ample trousers pocket.
“Hi uncle, you gotta light meh?”
The words punch into Brian’s stillness from nowhere. A young, emaciated looking, Chinese girl stands not a metre away from his table. Putting the scuffed book away, Brian stumbles and stutters in reply.
“Er no, no, I don’t smoke, perhaps someone else...”
“It’s ok uncle ‘cause I don’t have a cigarette either”, then she laughs, a small, tinny laugh – fake, but nevertheless endearing.
“I’m Irene, uncle, you look kinda lost. It’s ok, I’m not hooker or nothing, just noticed you alone kinda down, lost, lonely.”
Brian wants to comment on her name and say ‘goodnight’ but politeness forbids that. Instead he inwardly smiles. She’s like something out of a song. In the end, Brian says...
“I’m Brian.” Then, “I’m sorry but I don’t know you, but, yes, thank you, no I’m not lost, just taking a life pause is all.”
“Yeah, uncle must careful, Chinese girls steal. Steal even heart from you.” She chuckles again.
A garnish of browned, wavy, medium length hair frames Irene’s head. It bounces over her upper torso then serpentinely slithers to grace her slight bust.
Irene, in her early thirties perhaps, slim, attractive, bubbly and full of joie de vivre displays a soft, light-green, designer creased cotton blouse, its delicate sleeves rolled to kiss her elbow and cling to her slight frame, clawing down to her hips. This is draped over a black polyester and cotton-mix sleeveless vest, the blouse finally inches over her bra-less nipples and down to her figure-hugging soft, fading, designer jeans. They, in turn, caress Irene’s sharply modern, black, plastic shoes. The whole is offset with a necklace of large, green, glass beads which accentuates her couture and provides distance between the intense gaze of others and her private, intimate, self.
Irene sees the world in her own special way. She is special in the way that a pristine Ming vase might be special. Special because it is what it is and could be nothing else. To others, Irene might appear very much an energetic extrovert. She’s known to collect friends as bees collect pollen - people cling to her youth and vibrancy.
Irene flows into the seat opposite Brian. He’s warily bought her a latte. Transfixed, he carefully observes the young Chinese woman consuming the hot fluid - cupping the warm mug in both hands, licking the soft milk-froth playfully and sipping little cat sips of fluid. As they talk, time trickles gently with each of her sips. Somewhere between the sips and the trickling of time, Brian and she become something akin to friends.
“I’m artist. Least want to be. Take photos of kids’ graduations and stuff. Really want to photographer, but need money. Rent to be paid, pictures printed.”
She smiles again. It’s an innocent enough smile, raising her tattooed eyebrows, letting Brian see the bright blue stain across her eyelids – a momentary beauty indulgence - not as enduring as a tattoo and also less painful.
“What do you photograph?”
“Oh have own style, you wait, I’ll exhibition, invite you, take my work around world, become rich, famous, read about me in Tatler magazine, see me on TV. And you say – know her, that Irene, we met ZUS Coffee Kuala Lumpur.” She laughs again.
Brian smiles an indulgent smile.
“My parent Teochew/Hakka fight cat, dog. Think too talkative and get trouble one day. But love parents, though didn’t want me go Art School. I went anyway – my Ah Poh, grandmother. fought me to go. She always on side. Parents give in. But they right. No money in photo, have to take kids’ photos, but OK ‘cause love kids.”
It’s a monologue. Brian is not expected to take part. He’s been assigned the role of passive listener. He’s her audience of one. Her stage is ZUS Coffee and she performs to Brian, bedazzling him.
Outside, people jaywalk in the heat. They cross the busy bus-strewn road despite, or because of, the ageing iron bridge spanning it. A man sits on the rusting bridge steps selling small, pocket size, packets of tissue paper. Cabbies proffer lifts at exorbitant prices - bloated, red-faced, Western tourists provide an easy living to the city’s inhabitants. The blistering equatorial moist heat shows no signs of abating.
As if in a glamour, completely uncharacteristically and, mostly, to get rid of Irene, Brian agrees to meet with her, later. He arranges a rendezvous with his mental fingers crossed; pretending to go along with Irene’s plan, aware that it is unlikely that she would turn up. Brian plays a courteous, polite, game. He understands that the world is a dangerous place. It is full of charlatans, swindlers - a place where secret meetings of old men with young girls often spells TROUBLE in big, bold, Gothic letters.
Irene bounces out of the coffee house leaving Brian with a mixture of relief and loneliness.
Brian’s morning drifts through to afternoon
and slides uncomfortably into evening.
Back at his new ‘home’, Brian has only one decision to make. Should he amble out from Wangsa Maju, take the LRT and be on his own, or take a phenomenal risk and see if Irene is waiting for him and, if she is - then what?
Serious guide-books, and sensible magazines the world over, advise tourists against following people into dark alleys, jumping into taxis with strangers, or being lured off the beaten tourist track.
Carefully, diligently, Brian showers. He shaves and tries to avoid the negativity of the mirror reflection as much as possible. Donning a clean Van Heusen shirt (with only a few crumples), Brian climbs into his black Marks & Spencers trousers, slips on his new Clarke’s sandals and goes out.
He’s lucky. He manages to get a taxi on the road outside the new apartment. It arrives outside ZUS Coffee before festering doubts are able to overcome Brian’s positive mood. Irene is there, as arranged, preening, bubbly, fidgety, excited, welcoming. Seeing Brian, she jumps to peck him on the cheek – leaving a small, moist patch, glimmering with evening lipstick.
Surprised and unsure what is expected, Brian flinches a little at the early intimacy.
With not one word, gently, yet firmly, Irene takes Brian by the hand. She leads him through the maze of streets at the rear of Kota Raya Plaza. She hurries Brian past the Masjid Jamek Light Rail Transit station, tugs him across the road, through the Jalan Masjid India, while local stallholders stand nudging each other, engaging in ‘knowing’ winks as they pass.
Irene takes Brian past Maju Junction, a second ZUS Coffee, along the car congested Jalan Raja Laut and finally into Jalan Belia. She chatters excitedly along the way. Later, because Brian had been walking a little behind Irene, he’s unable to recall a single word she said but, nevertheless, feels intoxicated by her.
Outside the unremarkable, grey, concrete, Eon Banking building, a group of young people are jostling, joking, pulling, pushing, exclaiming, yelping. Bright, excited, faces light up when they see Irene, but fall slightly when they also see the old man with her.
Irene speaks quietly, animatedly, with the group in a mixture of Chinese and Malay the locals call ‘rojak’. Brian hears ‘Alamak’, ‘Aiyee’, ‘Foo yoh’, and senses himself stiffen. Brian prepares
to walk away, but a glowingly reassuring smile from Irene relaxes him. Brian falls, once more, under Irene’s enchantment.
The ill-matched group traverses steep, stained, concrete steps.
Clop, clop, clop, feminine heels stab at the pitted concrete floor.
Schlep, schlep - designer trainers shuffle, echoing just above the group’s twittering. They descend into a short corridor, each step bringing them closer to the tsunami of sound which is about to crash down on them.
Despite having travelled quite widely over the past forty years, Brian has never heard such unusual music. It is eerily enchanting and fills the huge, darkened, underground room. Pulsating multi-coloured Lights flash strobelike into the dark. Half-seen projected Images beat onto vibrating walls following heady music - thrumming energy burst from ethnic/electric musicians over in the dim far corner.
Avoiding emoting and, instead, using reasoning faculties, Brian discerns the music to be exotically ethnic indigenous music - ‘Sapeh’ perhaps as well as ‘Gambus’ accompanied by flutes, bamboo pipes with electric guitars emitting hauntingly eerie melodies. The harmonious whole resonates with interspersed electric feedback reminiscent, of 1960s psychedelic music from London’s Roundhouse or Gandalf’s Garden. The entire musical melange is enhanced by heart-pounding drumbeats married to strong, tugging, hypnotic, trance-inducing base-guitar beats.
It’s a vividly bright, young, carnival atmosphere.
Strangely dressed people dance, radiate black light, ultra violet, fluorescent, the whites of shirts, skirts, glowing, animated, frenzied, like beacons, strobe-lit, cavorting. It is the energy of youth displayed, flaunted, exhibited. Whole beings invested into one delicious moment of time, unmindful of futures, lost, enchanted by rhythms and atmosphere.
Music, rhythm - it all seems to provoke mankind’s basest, primal instincts in those enlivened twenty-first century revellers.
Scents - lush French perfumes, Indian aromatics, and Chinese attars - odours beyond description mingle with the fragrant musky heat of several hundred young bodies, bouncing, leaping for the sheer joy of being alive in total, absolute, assailing of the senses.
A young man in a harlequin costume, heavily beset with sequins, reflects, refracts in the light. He proffers Brian a 500ml bottle of fluid which he assumes is water. Brian is parched and drinks a little. Harlequin grasps Brian’s hand, drags him into the throng of dancers.
Brian is bewildered, but soon gyrates with the music, drifts with the crowd until, like them, he is abandoned to the music, it is in his bones, his very being, transforming him.
Brian Holland is washed with sensory explosions, cleansing him, making him forget who, what, why. Brian is surprisingly, pleasantly, lost to himself. Some gigantic God-hand has transcended Brian from earthly mortality, transported him beyond existence, melding boundaries exterior to earth, beyond Heaven and Hell, inside and outside the universe, within him and without him, all surpassing, all encompassing.
Brian ceases to be individual. He surrenders, is overpowered by sensual immersion; a jamboree of sensory indulgence has swept, aroused Brian from his near existential slumber. Brian is overwhelmed.
How long he dances Brian does not know, nor how much water he drinks from hands proffering 500ml bottle after 500 ml bottle of sweet, nectar, water. Brian dances as if he is eighteen again, full of energy, full of strutting ego, dancing away lacking self-consciousness, self-esteem. He and the music, he and the crowd merging, becoming one consciousness, whirling, shamanistic dragon song words sweeping individuality away with Dayak Iban vocals, trance-ethnic beats spinning Brian, whirling him like a puppet until he is lost in the music.
By the end of the night Brian is shattered.
Somehow, he is bundled into the rear of a taxi, and ends up near to his apartment in Wangsa Maju. The next midday Brian is left wondering if it was all a dream –but his aching limbs tell him otherwise.
That day, and the days which follow see Brian drifting back to his old habits - drinking solitary at a hotel bar, wandering alone through KLCC or the Mid-Valley Mall, surreptitiously avoiding all contact with ZUS Coffee at Kota Raya Plaza.
Timid, Brian nurses his loneliness, hold it close to him as it were a child, feeds it, nurtures it and encourages it to grow. That part of him, rediscovered by Irene, is deliberately stored away. Brian had experienced a more primal side to his
character, a shadow - and it’d frightened him.
After life’s many rebuffs, Brian feels more at ease with loneliness and despair, he knows what they offer. He draws them close to him, cloaks himself in them, comforted in the knowledge those feelings bring.
This shadow side is an unknown. Brian has no idea where this might lead, what disappointments, ultimately, it might bring. He feels safer with the devil he knows, the devil and the deep black pit he is used to staring into.
Brian wants to change, but change means risk - and in his sixties he is less of a gambler than he has ever been. His mid-life crisis needs confining to that one night of careless abandon, unrepeated in case, somehow, he might loose myself.
Several times Brian boards the monorail and exits at Chow Kit station. He tramps the few hundred yards back towards Maju Junction and deliberately walks past the building where Irene had taken him. By day, the underground hall is a Malay food court, favoured by workers from nearby offices but, at night, it transforms into the phenomenon of an enchanted cavern.
Brian ambles, oblivious to calls from newly woken she-males, their friendly ‘good mornings’, their soft teasing, but they hold no interest for him as he continues down parallel streets towards the rear of the Sogo store, past the Quality Hotel City Centre and along Jalan Raja Laut - where he had once stayed.
These days are chimerical, past, future, memories, events all swept together, blurring one into another, swamping Brian’s consciousness, his mind an automaton, instinctively existing. The urge to change - to seek out Irene, sweeps over Brian many times, each time he resists, feeling that he is no longer able to be the person he was with her.
It’s a crowed lunchtime. Brian Holland is in the shopping area of Bukit Bintang (another of Kuala Lumper’s tourist areas), eagerly eating lunch in Lot 10 of the basement hawker’s court, next to the Isetan supermarket. Two weeks have passed since he last met Irene.
“Hey Uncle, makan one, already, eh”
The irrepressible Irene follows her voice, gliding into the ersatz wooden seat opposite Brian. Her elbows jump to the table to support her elfin chin. A young, yellow haired, Chinese boy, intently listening to his iPod, accompanies Irene,
his triangle face contorted in deep concentration.
“Uncle you look blur ah, you not happy see me”
It takes Brian a moment or two to gather his thoughts. He’s shied away from direct contact with other people for a while. He finds it difficult to communicate.
“Um, hello Irene, er, good to see you I, er…” the words just wouldn’t come out quick enough.
“Wah Uncle, finish Nasi Ayam (chicken rice) so quick, eh” She can see leftover rice, the untouched cucumber cut into rounds, and smears of chilli paste on Brian’s plate, next to a half consumed small bowl of the accompanying broth.
“Er, do call me Brian.” He says.
Like that, they renew their friendship, if friendship it is.
It’s like the re-weaving of a spell, a continuing glamour. After several imploring outbursts by Irene, urging Brian to join her at the dance hall, chill to the vibes, she’s enraptured him once more.
Brian finds himself submitting to Irene’s insistence, promising to meet her outside the dance-hall, later in the evening.
It’s evening and Brian catches a taxi from near his apartment in Wangsa Maju, to Jalan Belia. Sitting in the taxi, outside the greying building, Brian can see Irene and some of the crowd he’d met last time. Brian has a pang of anxiety edged with all kinds of doubts and nervousness, sharp, stabbing sensations as if he is being punished for his thoughts.
Anxiously Brian exits the taxi, and meets with the youthfully exuberant crowd. Who, upon seeing him, wave and cheer as if he’s a rock star. Brian feels lighter. He smiles an honest smile back.
Downstairs, in the subterranean basement, one act (Space Gambus Effect) is climaxing as Brian, Irene and their cohorts enter the hall. Up next is Akar Umbi (another local band that Irene has brought Brian back to see). Dimly, Mak Minah and her band are just visible, readying themselves onstage.
Throughout this night Brian begins to experience something similar to his previous visit.
Again, he gives his mind and body over to the effervescently bewitching music. Again, sensations of absence, euphoria, elation, oneness, totality, immersion into the universal life force beguile and assail his senses. Sensations tug Brian’s mind/spirit this way, and that, experiencing the room, being of one consciousness, becoming the realisation of universal oneness, melding, merging into eternal cosmic light.
At evening’s cessation Brian is, once again, unable to remember exactly what had transpired, but recalls feeling good - the remains of adrenalin/cortisol coursing through his system. He feels better than he has for many years.
“Uncle, er Brian, years seem drop from you, you young, happy ah”. Remarks Irene. Brian grins an inane grin.
Once more Brian returns to his apartment, and sleeps. The following evening he repeats the adventure - meeting up with Irene, her friends, the venue - dancing through the night, elation, returning to his apartment to rest and dream wonderful, exhausting, dreams.
Irene’s energy, the energy of the crowd, the vibrancy of the dance-hall have all acted like a drug upon him - the more he experiences the more he wants. Feelings of oneness, closeness, togetherness enveloping him are a powerful narcotic - he wants to live in that experience, to be that experience, to continue to feel as it makes him feel while he is swathed in it.
For a fourth time Brian shower,s shaves, dresses and takes a taxi to Jalan Belia.
On arrival, there’s no welcoming crowd outside the dreary Bank building. No Irene at the top of the steps, no lights even.
Brian asks the taxi driver to wait while he goes in to investigate.
Going down the steps, one half-hidden step after another, Brian slides into the small corridor leading to the hall. On a notice board, barely lit by a yellow street lamp, is the legend….
NOTIS RAMPASAN PREMIS
(NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE OF PREMISES)
Brian is stunned. His heart races. He looks to find other signs. The hall has been swept clean and a faint smell of human urine is all that remains to remind Brian of the existence of
others.
He takes the taxi back ‘home’, depressed, deep in thought.
On this day Brian fairly sprints out of his apartment, takes a taxi to the LRT and makes his way to ZUS Coffee on the corner of Kota Raya Plaza in KL’s China Town. He orders croissants for breakfast and waits. Brian consumes countless cups of ‘Flat White’ coffee, waits until lunchtime, has ‘Nasi Lemak’ for lunch at ZUS Coffee and continues to wait until afternoon’s end, then he returns to his Wangsa Maju apartment.
For a few days Brian follows the Irene routine until it has become obvious that Irene is not going to appear at ZUS Coffee any time soon.
During these days of waiting for Irene, his life is on hold. It is as if an unseen spiritual hand has pressed the pause to his life.
At first Brian feels disappointed, dismayed even, and then agitated that his adventure has come to a premature ending. Gradually Brian realises that he would not be taking part in the enchantment of dance again or, once more, experience the wonder of universal togetherness.
It’s heartbreaking.
Brian is aware that it’s unhealthy to dwell on the past.
Over time, Brian Holland accepts what has transpired. He has internalised the obvious reality and manages to smile at those three precious, magical, nights when he had been in the company of others. Those experiences dissolving like rice-paper on the tongue.
Brian doesn’t know if Irene has ever reappeared at ZUS Coffee. He no longer goes there.
He’s never seen Irene again at Bukit Bintang.
After many restless, searching days, Brian has, simply, given up looking for her and the dance hall at Jalan Belia.
To his knowledge, that establishment has never yet reopened.
I definitely grew into [being an artist]. In fact, as a child, I did nothing athletic, nothing artistic and nothing musical. The irony is that I ended up in an art form that is athletic, musical and artistic. I was a total bookworm, a history nerd. I bought a set of encyclopedias at a lawn sale and read them from A through to Z. But they were from the 1950s, so I had this really warped sense of history. It was the height of the British Empire. We were the ‘noble savage’.
These last few years, I feel like I’ve returned to that researcher part of me. I was a bookworm in high school and then I got to Sydney Uni and I thought I was going to smash it. But there were all these super brains around me and I found myself remarkably uninterested in studies.
I knew I was Aboriginal, I knew my father was Wiradjuri, but I was living with my nonAboriginal mother and stepfather, and so I’d never really engaged [with my cultural identity]. I never thought of it as something that you practise, that you do. It was just this thing that I knew about myself. But then when I went to uni, I found myself on the student council as the Indigenous Officer. I didn’t know the first thing about my culture. I didn’t know the intricacies of black politics. But I got involved in student activism. I was a radical—Marxist reading circles and the whole vibe. Got arrested a bunch of times, did environmental stuff, but in particular it was around black activism. It was the era of the Sydney Olympics, and we had protests with Aunty Jenny Munro down at the tent embassy in Victoria Park.
I started a national Indigenous students’
network around the time of the globalisation protests in Seattle. We had our own blockade of the World Economic Forum in September 2000 at the Crown Casino in Melbourne. I was radicalised and I started to see things through the prism of anti-capitalism. I started to see colonisation as a part of the imperialist project. I was supposed to organise the protests for the Sydney Olympics, but ended up burning out from the experience. I was this 19-year-old and I needed to find a more sustainable way to have that voice. My first observation was, before I was able to go and fight for my people, I needed to know who my people are, what does it mean to be Aboriginal? My dad [Christopher Kirkbright] said, ‘Why don’t you go to NAISDA [National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association]?’ Going to NAISDA actually wasn’t about dance, it wasn’t about art. It was a community of blackfellas that I could hang out with and learn about my culture with. I wasn’t even really thinking about dance, which sounds funny now in hindsight.
I remember day one, Monday morning, first dance class, lyrical jazz with Ronnie Arnold. He was an amazing African-American dancer, choreographer and teacher who came to Australia in 1960 with the first tour of West Side Story. That was it. I fell in love. I was like, this is the thing I want to do for the rest of my life. And I have, every day in my life. I became an artist. I discovered this part of me and I just was in love with it.
I think it married with this other side of me—I’d come out and I’d discovered nightclubs. And so I discovered my body on the dance floor and I discovered boys and sex and queerness. I would
go on the dance floor, and I wouldn’t leave it for 14 hours. I would dance into a trance state.
Girraaru Galing Gaanhagirri is a meditation on the temporality of everything. That first class was like standing in a corridor and opening a door and walking into a library. I didn’t yet know all the content of the books, but I saw all the books there and this whole realm of knowledge, this whole embodied knowledge that there is to learn. That was 22 years ago and I’m still consumed. I love the research of it. I love the rigour of it. I love the sweat. I love mastering choreography. I love even the pain of it, which is a part of the package now. (Especially as you get older, it’s more and more part of the package!)
I’m a total show pony. I love being centrestage. I love having a relationship with the audience. I love the two-way feedback. I love that I’m sharing with them, but they’re also sending me energy and messages. A lot of my work is immersive and participatory. But even when I do make work on a stage, it’s still live, I’m still tinkering with it and tailoring it live in the moment, in response to the subtle signals that the audience is sending me. My work has become really participatory; I think it’s because it’s a yarn, basically. I enjoy that. I love conversation.
I started from the place of ‘I want this to be the way I do my activism’. And then I went into NAISDA and quickly realised, I’m going to need to learn my craft. I wanted to be a choreographer. I always wanted to be a storyteller. With dance, you need to know the craft in order to be a choreographer. So then I got obsessed by how high I could get my leg and how many pirouettes I could do.
I fell into the craft. And for a long time, I kind of forgot that desire for this to be an activist outlet. I kept on seeing how far I could push myself. I left NAISDA after two years. I went to WAAPA [Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts] and I did three years there. I was literally tugging on girls’ leotards asking
them how to do stuff in ballet! It was hard, there were gruelling long days. They really strip you down. In my third year, a French choreographer came and she organised for me to do an internship with Jean Claude Galotta in Grenoble in France. Then I ended up in a little company in Portugal for a year doing really old-school stuff. I met this Israeli dancer there and we fell in love, and so I followed him to Historical Palestine (which many now call Israel) and that was where I was for the next nine years.
I danced in companies and then I went freelance and built a life and bought a house with him and became quite skilled. I did ballet every day, every day for 15 years. I became a virtuosic dancer. I was known for my partnering. But I forgot that I was black, because over there I just stopped having the conversation. I wouldn’t volunteer the information that I was Aboriginal because of the way I look, people just couldn’t wrap their heads around it. I dropped out of communication with my father and my siblings. And then the relationship ended. I lost my visa, and then I got a job with Chunky Move in Melbourne. The project was called the Complexity of Belonging 2014. It was two European artists, Anouk van Dijk and Falk Richter, making a work in Australia with Australian performers about Australian identity. It was interesting, as I had been Australian in Europe. I’m pretty sure I got the gig because they needed to have an Aboriginal voice in the room. I’m really grateful for that, because I was ‘little league’ compared to those dancers, they were phenomenal dancers.
Through the improvisations, in the studio, we had to pull up stories. I was travelling back [to Australia] just to work and then I felt this really strong call to come home, to reconnect with Country, to reconnect with my family. I rediscovered that hibernating desire to make art and to make art that has a political, activist drive to it that reclaims culture, like my current research into ceremony. I rediscovered that that was the idea all along. But I don’t regret
putting it aside, because now I’ve got the craft, I know how to make work. I’ve done my 10 000 hours in the studio, watching all kinds of choreographers, all kinds of artists do great work and terrible work and everything in between. None of this was planned, but with hindsight it all makes sense.
The wind will bring the rain spoke of this consequentiality of Country, of nature, of the universe.
The Ceremony work was born out of asking, how would I take my craft that I make for my live, immersive, participatory performances and translate that into a work for a gallery? And it’s really exciting at 41 to be back to when I was 20 and encountering a whole new genre in a whole new world and being able to learn.
Giraaru Galing Gaanhagirri is a meditation on the temporality of everything. I remember when I was researching Wiradjuri ceremony at the National Library of Australia. I had to leave the library and go down to that weird artificial lake in the middle of Canberra, and I burst into tears, because it was like we would create the Taj Mahal and then we would let it grow over again, only to remake it somewhere else or perhaps in the same place. It was just so clever and sophisticated, and colonisation just came and bulldozed it. It’s heartbreaking.
I stumbled upon the title of the work in Uncle Stan Grant’s [Wiradjuri] dictionary, which has been turned into an online app. In my previous work Daddy 2019 there’s a scene where I am wrestling with myself, with my relationship with my father. It’s about this kind of wrestling, contorting. There’s one scene where the audience has to sit there and watch me try to teach myself, try to wrap my tongue around these complex sentences that Uncle Stan is saying in this app. One of the phrases that landed beautifully for me was ‘giraaru galing gaanhagirri’. It has a kind of poetry to it. It has alliteration that I love and it means ‘the wind will bring rain’.
The idea for this work came during lockdown. Normally my works are about me cutting myself open and sharing. They’re about an ordeal. They’re an ordeal that I go through and the audience is dragged along with me. But in the middle of lockdown I thought I’d like to do something that’s poetic and beautiful, and even meditative. I thought about iterations and cycles. The wind will bring the rain spoke of this consequentiality of Country, of nature, of the universe. That one thing brings the other.
The wind brings the rain. We understand that one causes the other, that all of nature, all of the universe is things causing other things to happen. The wise old people perceive that even more than we do. I wanted to make a work that was a meditation on that. Then I began the process of rehearsing in my living room. I was in lockdown, so that was all I had. I was playing with the idea of my body becoming water and with water on my skin.
Sometimes when I know a storm has come down through Wiradjuri Country, crossed over the Murray River down to Naarm, down to Kulin Country, I’ll go and stand outside in that storm and let the water pour over me. It’s a way of connecting with my Country, especially during the lockdown, in this visceral, corporeal, real way. Not only is there this recognition that there are these cycles in Country, but you carry them with you in memory.
One time I was in Bathurst, which is Wiradjuri Country. I’d just come out. I was at this queer students’ conference. I was still awake at dawn, when everyone else was asleep, and I decided to go for a walk. I wandered outside and it was a frosty morning, those crisp Central West winters. I saw on top of the hill a tree without any leaves. There was a flock of small birds swooping through the naked limbs of the tree and the sun was behind it. I couldn’t actually see them. They were just silhouettes. I’d like to think they were yirribin, which is the welcome swallow. They’re flirty and flitty and constantly on the move and social and just very me. I looked at them and thought, they’re not breeding, they’re not feeding, they’re just
playing. They were dancing. This was before I’d gone to NAISDA. This was when I was still an activist. So the story goes, it was right then and there on that morning, looking at those birds, that I decided to leave uni, leave student activism and become a dancer. And here I am, still riding the currents.
This artist’s statement has been edited from an interview with the artist, recorded in Naarm/ Melbourne, 13 December 2021
“When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children”. (Pablo Picasso to Herbert Read, when visiting an exhibition of children's drawings, quoted in letter from Read to Times 27 October 1956)
Ambika Chadha is an Indian artist residing in Malaysia. She paints in a child-like manner. Her ‘painter’s Eye’ (or recognition of aesthetic values) comes from her photographer father, who had been a prominent at the Times of India. Ambika has previously lived in India’s Delhi and Singapore before moving to Malaysia.
I had the great pleasure of visiting Ambika Chadha at her Malaysian home with its long, rectangular, pond of Koi (nishikigoi) carp, stunningly blue water lilies and calmingly pink Lotus flowers, in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur.
The artist had walked out to greet me from her home studio on a characteristically humid, bright, sunny Malaysian day. She was dressed in paint-smeared ‘work’ clothes - a Harry Potter sweatshirt and baggy, paint-graced slacks as she emerged from the glass doorway of one her studio’s glass walls. Once we were inside her studio, I was proffered a beverage. I requested a black coffee with a spot of cold water (to take the bitter edge from the drink).
While I awaited my liquid refreshment, I’d noticed a books. Some were on two small wooden tables by her kitchen door, nestled near two plush-looking mauve high-backed chairs. One book was a small volume on the history of (Western?) art, another about Keith Haring (an American New York City Pop/Graffiti artist) yet another concerning the British colourist David Hockney, and a fourth about the American neo-Expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Bhagini
Alexandra
Elsewhere, on a shelf at the rear of the studio, were ‘Ripley Twists: Brutal Beasts', Jay Shetty’s ‘Think Like a Monk’ and Francoise Barbira Freedman’s ‘Yoga for Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond’.
Ambika Chadha’s art studio, in which we chatted about art for a few hours, had once been the artist’s Yoga Studio. A still ambience continued to pervade the space which had a distinct feeling of intuitive action, as well as intimations of intellectual curiosity too.
Anticipating our meeting, Ambika had created a display of her many, many paintings, (which some might include within the newly coined art term - Metamodernism).
Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in their 2010 essay "Notes on Metamodernism” have intimated that “Metamodernism displaces the parameters of the present with those of a future presence that is futureless; and it displaces the boundaries of our place with those of a surreal place that is placeless)
Even that small ‘sample’ of Ambika’s imagery took up much of the space of her large studio. The artist proffered many more of her works, small and large, which she laid on the floor for my visual delectation.
The room, which had two, long, all glass-walls, admitted a glorious natural light. That light fairly shone and helped highlight the artist’s intensely hued paintings (mostly stunning female portrait characterisations). I felt as though if any judging was happening there, it was the paintings looking down from their perches, and up from the floor, judging me, not the other way around.
Ambika’s paintings, mostly of females (the girls in the title of this piece), reflected the artist's deep affection for colour, her artistic (faux) naivety and her earnest dedication to her artistry.
While her creations may be seen to exist within Metamodern art worlds of both Eastern and Western duality, there is no denying distinct
resonances of ‘Naïf’ and ‘Outsider’ imagery within Ambika’s creations. Her works were reminiscent of creations from the nascent years of Western and South Asian Modern arts with, perhaps, a hint of Basquiat’s own brand of ‘Neo Expressionism’.
Theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, have written that
“Metamodernism can be conceived of as a kind of informed naivety, a pragmatic idealism”.
This might be an excellent way of describing Ambika Chadha’s ‘faux Naïf’ works which move between flat and highly coloured ‘Naiveness’ and her keen, intellectual, ‘Knowing’. There was also a distinct biting edge to Ambika’s brightly colourful images of women. She ‘reveals’ a complexity of emotions within her creations, enhanced by her colour choices.
Pablo Picasso had once said… “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian”, when referring to the artworks of Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997). However, he could have been talking about Ambika’s works. Maria’s folkloric and richly coloured works had won a gold medal at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Sadly “Invading Russian forces destroyed a museum in Ivankiv, a city northwest of the capital Kyiv, that was home to dozens of works by the Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko” (Vivienne Chow, Artnet, February 28, 2022)
In Algeria, Baya Mahieddine (aka Fatima Haddad, 1931 - 1998), had been a self-taught Algerian female artist whose work had evaded easy artistic pigeonholing albeit ‘Naïf’ ‘Naïve’, ‘Primitive’, ‘Surreal’, or ‘Outsider’, much the same as Ambika. In 1947, Aimé Maeght discovered Baya’s works and showed them at his Paris gallery. The works were accompanied by a text from Surrealist André Breton for ‘Derrière le Miroir’ (Behind the Mirror) catalogue. Baya, had also written her first text, ‘Le grand oiseau’ (The Big Bird) for the showing. The artist Ambika Chadha’s paintings too defy compartmentalising
as she awaits her Aimé Maeght or André Breton for recognition too.
Like early Western Naïf painters, such as Baya, Ambika pours herself into her creations, ‘painting’ intuitively with her heart, her soul and her body too. Ambika frequently paints prostrate on her canvas. It is an exercise that her many years of practising yoga has enabled her to exercise, for she has physical ‘painterly’ movements which few of us could achieve. Ambika and her artworks become as one. She becomes mentally immersed with her paintings while frequently physically next to them too.
I left Ambika Chadha’s studio in the firm belief that I should encounter her works again, maybe in some prestigious gallery elsewhere and elsewhen. Ed
Masai
Catherine
indigenous people of india tania chatterjee
Bison horn Maria couple
indigenous people of india tania chatterjee
Tania Chatterjee is a photographer, humanitarian worker and educator based in Kolkata, India. After completing her masters in environment management, she started her career as a humanitarian professional. Since 2010 she has been practicing photography as her full time profession. She is founder and chief mentor of FOTORBIT Pvt. Ltd. (www.fotorbit.com). A company dedicated to promote photography as a visual art form. Her niche interests are documentary and human interest photography.
Tania has completed various photographic assignments with some renowned organisations like NatGeoTravellerindia, India Film Project etc. She has judged numerous national and international photography competitions. Tania's photos have been widely published in some famous platforms like Smart Photography Magazine, Asian Photography Magazine, Eyeshot, Streetphotographyfoundation, 121 clicks etc and exhibited around the world, along with numerous national and international awards.
Tania conducts regular photography classes and workshops to develop photographic techniques amongst upcoming photographers She conducts photography tours in various parts of India and South East Asia.Visit FOTORBIT (www.fotorbit.com) to know about her upcoming workshops.
Bison horn Maria woman
Beauty of Bonda women
Beauty of Kutch
Bonda tribal women with their home made liquor
Jat woman
Tribal of Bastar
Sonja Kastner
Sonja Kastner
“In my art, I use clay as a medium to convey what moves me and express how I view the world, tongue always firmly in cheek.
As a textile designer and a lover of all things pattern, colour and print, as well as clay, I am now able to combine and practise all my passions as one. Currently, I am using the process of photolithographic printing on clay, combining it with handpainted underglaze decoration and accents of gold lustre.
The aim of my art is simply to amuse, evoke an emotion or just brighten up a dull wall. And above all a reminder to not take ourselves too seriously.”
Sonja Kastner, is a South African ceramic artist based in Cape Town. She graduated as a textile designer but her love of clay and surface decoration soon led her to pursue a journey into the world of ceramics, specializing in colourful handmade stoneware vessels and plates that blend traditional craftsmanship with contemporary storytelling. Using a combination of underglaze, photolithographic printing, handwritten text, and gold lustre, Sonja creates pieces that are both visually striking and rich with humour and meaning.
Inspired by historical engravings and vintage imagery, Sonja meticulously curates and assembles collages that offer witty, playful, and sometimes satirical reflections on life and the human condition. Each plate serves as a canvas for narrative, where old-world aesthetics meet modern-day musings, inviting viewers to engage with art that is both relatable and thought-provoking.
Through a unique fusion of pattern, print, and personal expression, Sonja aims to spark joy and connection, transforming everyday objects into collectible works of art. Her ceramics plates have become sought after collectors items in South Africa and Europe. Exhibitions include numerous group exhibitions as well as a solo exhibition in 2023.
From art@alveston.london
eating Singapore
Spicy chicken feet
eating Singapore
Once again I’d visited the culinary delight that is Singapore. The “Little Red Dot” (as Singapore is affectionately known), punctuates the exclamation mark of South East Asia’s ‘Peninsular Malaysia’.
Singapore is known for its series of multi-cultural cuisines, presenting exciting dishes of which I sampled a minute number, in only four days.
My cuisine journey had begun with me sitting in my favourite Singaporean Dim Sum restaurant - Geylang Monkok Dim Dum, 214 Geylang Rd, and waiting for my Dim Sum ("touch the heart" in Cantonese) to arrive. It was there and then that I’d revised my plans for my short trip. Instead of my usual jaunt around the art galleries and/ or museums, right then I’d decided to seek out some of the cuisines that have held modern Singapore together over the past 60 years of its existence.
David Chang, founder of Momofuku (Japanese for ‘Lucky Peach’) and an American celebrity chef, has indicated that culinary excellence is not limited to ‘fine dining’. He believes that a Michelin star could be awarded for something like the best hamburger. Therefore, instead of reaching for 5 star and /or Michelin dining, I looked for dishes and cuisines which have lasted during Singapore’s rise. After the Covid 19 pandemic Momofuku closed its last location in Singapore - at the Shangri-La Hotel, in 2017.
At Singapore’s Mongkok Dim Sum I’d had
steamed ‘Spicy chicken feet’ - always a favourite of mine, ‘Woo Kok’, which is crispy deep-fried Taro pastry with meat filling, and ‘Fish Porridge’. I’d had a fish porridge in Malaysia’s Sarawak recently, which was simply delicious, and was encouraged to try this one in Singapore. It was okay but, quite obviously, not the same.
I have times when I am desperate for Dim Sum. Luckily Mongkok seldom disappoints. That’s why on my first day back in Singapore I’d made a bee-line there. The price is okay, not cheap but there is a comprehensive menu and Mongkok is open 24 hours, which is handy.
I love Dim Sum, but my favourite Malaysian breakfast (other than the seemingly ubiquitous Dosai/Thosai) is that combination of soft (half) boiled eggs broken into a small bowl and laced with soy sauce (not salt) and white pepper, then eaten with a toasted sandwich of butter and Kaya (coconut) jam, with a mug or cup of local Kopi (coffee) sweetened with condensed milk (or more likely non-dairy creamer these days)
Perhaps that breakfast is a reminder of my English countryside youth. Eggs then were cheap (no pun intended) and thick slices of bread were toasted with a ‘toasting fork’ in front of an actual fire, or an electric-bar fire. We had nothing but butter on the toast, and that was generally scraped on and scraped off the toast to cut down on waste. Soft boiled eggs were plonked into the waiting ‘egg cups’, their tops sliced off, fine grain salt added, and the toasted bread and butter was cut into
Woo Kok
Murugan
‘soldiers’ (strips) which were then dunked into the juicy orange egg yolks.
During the British occupancy of Malaya, that breakfast practice of eating soft-boiled eggs with toast was eventually made ‘Malaysian’ by Hainanese immigrants who adapted the British breakfast. The partially cooked eggs were cracked not into an egg-cup but into a bowl. Soy sauce and white pepper were added, and served with Kaya (coconut jam) toast.
I’d discovered that one fifty year old ‘Kopitiam’ (coffee shop) - Heap Seng Leong Coffee shop, 10 N Bridge Rd, #01-5109, Singapore, was a traditional Singaporean Kopitiam, and dated back to 1974.
Sadly I didn't have the patience needed to wait in a long queue to give my order. Having cleaned the very dirty table myself with a wet wipe, there was no server coming and a queue of much younger people behind a gentleman preparing toast and making coffee. At the time I had no idea how to order, and glad that I didn’t.
It would have been nice to have eaten at Heap Seng Leong Coffee shop, in an authentic piece of local history, however, the general messy ambiance and lack of cleanliness made me reconsider.
Instead, I walked further down the road to the North Bridge Road Market & Food Centre (selling very traditional Singaporean dishes). There, I had 4 half (soft) boiled eggs, 3 toasted Kaya (coconut jam) and butter sandwiches and a strong local coffee with condensed milk. Not ideal for a pre-diabetic, but satisfying anyway.
Another day I’d searched the internet for the Indian styled ‘crêpe’ called Dosa/Dosai/Thosai (depending on where you are, ie. Dosa in India [mostly, except Tamil Nadu where it is Dosai], in Malaysia and Singapore it’s Thosai, except for when it’s not. Confusing, yes.
What I found was an eatery not called Dosa,
but Idly. I was intrigued. I had to go there for breakfast. Only by the time I got to Murugan idli - 81 Syed Alwi Rd, Singapore, it was Brunch time at that vegetarian restaurant.
The extensive menu included more traditional South Indian items such as Onion Uttapam, Masala Dosai, Podi Idli, Sweet Pongal, Kuli Paniyaram and Plantain Baji. Eventually I’d opted for Mudakathan Keerai Dosai, Mini Idli in a Sambar, and filter coffee (which comes in a small traditional stainless steel vessel seated in a larger one, ie served in a metal tumbler, inside the dabarah saucer).
One evening I walked out to the Paya Lebar Square shopping centre, 7 Pasir Ris Central, #B217. There, amongst so many, many food outlets I’d discovered Haus Ban Mian, Singapore. The ‘Signature Trio Egg Spinach, - soup noodle drew my attention. It was three types of eggs (century egg, salted duck egg, and fresh chicken egg) with spinach and a broth containing minced chicken and whichever noodles one chooses. Apparently that dish hails from China where it has a vegetable called Gǒu chǐ ("dog's teeth”) instead of spinach. It was amazingly delicious.
And, on my last full day in Singapore, I’d awoken thinking of the Indian Muslim dish ’Mee Rebus’. Mee Rebus, literally means blanched noodles. That dish comes with a thick, delicious, spiced sauce, a whole egg, fried onions, yellow noodles and bean sprouts.
Elsewhere the dish may have additional ingredients. However, my dish at the N.M Yusof. Sahib Seri Kembang Muslim Food outlet in the Eunos Crescent Market and Food Centre, Blk 4A Eunos Crescent Singapore, was just fine. Mee Rebus' origins are unclear. Some say that it might have originated in Indonesia, possibly Java.
I was a little sad to leave Singapore, but happy to be going back to Malaysia where I could continue my gastronomic journeying.
A Contemporary Art Exhibition on Food and Social Imagination
In the vibrant and complex tapestry that is Malaysia, few symbols speak more clearly of unity and shared identity than food. It is through food that Malaysians find common ground, even amidst difference. As a curator who has spent over a decade exploring the intersections of contemporary art, culture, and society, I find food to be a compelling and deeply personal metaphor for the ways in which we coexist: sometimes harmoniously, sometimes tensely, but always with flavour.
Celebrating Diversity emerges in conjunction with Malaysia's Merdeka celebrations, a period when national identity is both commemorated and questioned. The exhibition seeks to unpack the symbolic power of food as a reflection of cultural hybridity, memory, and collective experience. Here, food is more than a theme; it is a language, a vessel of memory, a site of exchange, and a metaphor for survival, resistance, and belonging.
Each artwork in this exhibition serves as an ingredient in a broader narrative of Malaysian identity. These works explore food not only in its visual or material form but as lived experience through rituals, gestures, scents, and stories. The participating artists draw from personal memories, community practices, historical references, and the intangible cultural heritage that food embodies.
In a time when nationalism is often deployed to exclude, this exhibition reclaims Merdeka as a moment of radical inclusivity. It insists that identity is not singular or absolute but layered, much like the flavours in a well-balanced dish. From the fragrant complexity of Nasi Kerabu to the humble yet beloved Roti Cannai, these dishes carry within them the genealogies of migration, colonial histories, intercultural marriages, and generational exchange.
The works presented here span various media such as painting, installation, sculpture, and mixed media, each offering a unique sensory experience. Some evoke nostalgia through material choices; others invite the audience to engage through touch. A few even verge on performance, re-enacting the rituals of food preparation or communal dining.
Food, after all, is never neutral. It carries politics and histories within it. Who gets to cook what, where, and for whom? Who has access to certain ingredients or rituals? Whose recipes are preserved, and whose are forgotten? These questions are subtly but powerfully embedded within the works featured in this show. The exhibition therefore functions not only as a celebration but also as a site of critical inquiry.
Celebrating Diversity is also a timely response to global discourses around identity and migration. As countries grapple with issues of displacement
and cultural erasure, Malaysia’s example of coexisting diversity, though imperfect, offers valuable insights. This exhibition does not pretend that diversity is always easy or peaceful, but it affirms its importance. Diversity, like cooking, requires care, negotiation, and imagination.
In curating this show, I am reminded of the countless meals shared across difference: the
Chinese family enjoying rendang during Raya, the Indian stall selling nasi lemak with sambal blachan, the Malay auntie trying Yong Tau Foo and incorporating kuah kacang. These are not just anecdotes; they are acts of everyday diplomacy, cultural openness, and quiet resistance to division.
Contemporary life, however, is rapidly changing how we relate to one another around food. The
Ho Mei Kei, Blocks of Kuih
Ho Mei Kei, Bowls of Malaysia
ritual of gathering over a meal has been reshaped by digital culture and social media, where eating together is often filtered through the lens of documentation. Instagrammable dishes, food vlogs, and online reviews have, in many ways, replaced the intimacy of shared meals with curated performance. The dining table is now both physical and digital, both communal and performative. This exhibition acknowledges this shift, asking whether technology enhances or diminishes our shared human experience around food.
A compelling example of this cultural transformation is seen in the work of Aimman Hafizal, whose pop surreal sculptures transform familiar food forms into fantastical, dreamlike landscapes. In his practice, food becomes architecture: giant nasi lemak, suspended eggs, and reimagined snacks populate strange yet playful worlds. These works speak to the hyperreal, digitally mediated experience of contemporary food culture: nostalgic, excessive, uncanny, and always on display. Aimman's sculptures invite us to reflect not only on what we eat, but how we consume images of food in a world obsessed with visibility and performance.
Another work that powerfully expands the exhibition's conceptual reach is Heroes’ anti Heroes (2014–2022): A Menu of Ideology Promotion of Power by Azizan Paiman. Spanning nearly a decade, this project treats politics as a form of cultural cuisine, interrogating how ideological loyalty is shaped not just by facts, but by emotional and symbolic consumption. Using primary school exercise books, those covering history, religion, geography, and life skills, as metaphorical serving plates, the artist critiques how early education sets the menu for ideological tastes that persist into adulthood. Through collage techniques, fragmented portraits of political figures from various parties and eras are assembled into visual recipes that question how narratives of power are constructed, consumed, and remembered. In doing so, the work challenges us to reconsider what we have been fed, politically and culturally, and what ingredients may have been left out. It aligns perfectly with the exhibition’s central inquiry into how food, in all its symbolic weight, reveals deeper truths about our social fabric.
Ultimately, Celebrating Diversity is an invitation to look, to listen, to taste, and to reflect. It asks us to consider how something as ordinary as a meal can become a map of who
Kow Leong Kiang, Honey Lemon
we are, how we live, and how we might move forward together. In this way, the exhibition is both a tribute and a provocation: a feast of stories, a table set for all.
As Malaysia continues to define and redefine itself, may we always return to the table, hungry not just for food, but for understanding, connection, and shared meaning.
Kenny Teng Curator
Kelana Square, GL13, Ground Floor Block B, Jalan SS 7/26, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Phone: +60 3-7880 0991
Yuki Tham, More than just snacks
Azzaha Ibrahim, Cempaka Gila
Azzaha Ibrahim, Cempaka Gila closeup
Gan Chin Lee, Makan-Makan 1 Malaysia
FOREWORD
So why did I, FuFu, travel by bus?
I left Malaysia after completing Form Six (Pre-University Studies) for Japan pursuing my tertiary education. When I was in Japan, very often, both my Japanese classmates and friends from all over the world asked me about tourist sites in Malaysia, like those must-visit places and must-eat local dishes. Sadly, I had to look up the info on the internet, simply because I didn't really know where to visit in Malaysia, particularly in those smaller towns.
While studying in Japan, I had been to big cities like Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka, as well as small towns and villages. Once completing my bachelor's degree, I headed off visiting my friends around the world. I met scores of travellers, again, they questioned me where to go other than the famous and major cities like Kuala Lumpur, Melaka, Pula Pinang and Pulau Langkawi. I felt ashamed as I couldn't tell them much, because I truly hadn't travelled around Malaysia. Many of my friends were envious of my travels all over the world, but I felt bad for not being able to answer the questions about my own country.
Hence, right after resigning from my job, I decided to explore Malaysia, first the peninsular. But I have no car, no stamina for cycling, and our train services were not comprehensive enough, so, I was left with only one choice - by BUS! This was also a coincidence. My research in university was on transportation and my thesis was about travel time and expenditure. I went to Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia for their Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems, my master's thesis was about the BRT. I strongly felt that I must travel by bus to know and understand better our bus system, meanwhile to see the bus coverage and which places I get to travel by bus.
Immediately, I started my journey by bus in Perak, Pulau Pinang, Perlis and Kedah, from December 2015 till February 2016, exploring towns and villages.
I’d visited the exhibition ‘My Journey by Bus’, a talk by public transport afficionardo Lam Ching Fu, at Knowledge Centre Bursa Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, at the end of August, 2025. That talk was in conjunction with Hari Kebangsaan and the Knowledge Centre, Bursa Malaysia during its Merdeka series of talks and events, dedicated to honouring Malaysia’s history, diverse culture and its people.
Obviously a lot of time, effort and money had been spent on the exhibition presentation ‘posters’, both on the wall and hanging. Those posters enabled the audience to get more of a feel for Lam Ching Fu’s bus journeys. I, for one, was intrigued and fascinated by that visual exhibition, maybe a little more so than by the talk. When you’ve spent all your energies etc etc etc on the visuals, and in some cases a tactile or two too, then your audible presentation must surpass and, to a certain extent, overshadow anything else in the room. Sadly, it didn’t.
I would have been happier with a small documentary film, or films, running on a loop, capturing the essence of Fu’s journeying and, maybe, like a previous ‘talk’ I’d been to in Kuala Lumpur, the scent and actuality of at least one of the dishes the writer had devoured on his voyages (pictured in some of the large presentation ‘posters’. Alternatively, a walk and talk through the posters might have brought some nuance to the subject. However, a dry, stand up, slide show and talk did not really add anything to what was already on exhibit there and then, at Bursa Malaysia. It was an opportunity missed.
Nevertheless, I bought both of the volumes available (self published by the author) in paperback and may even attempt to read one or other while sitting on a local bus (coach), sometime soon when I visit Melaka (there are no trains servicing that beautiful old city).
Ed.
My Journey By Bus, Lam Ching Fu, 2019, FuFu Productions, Softcover, 25.5cm x 18cm, 272 pages ISBN: 9789833046096, RM80.00
My Journey By Bus
Perak
A book that shares the local bus experiences in Perak, Pulau Pinang, Perlis and Kedah.
Martin Bradley is the author of a collection of poetryRemembering Whiteness and Other Poems (2012, Bougainvillea Press); a charity travelogue - A Story of Colours of Cambodia, which he also designed (2012, EverDay and Educare); a collection of his writings for various magazines called Buffalo and Breadfruit (2012, Monsoon Book)s; an art book for the Philippine artist Toro, called Uniquely Toro (2013), which he also designed, also has written a history of pharmacy for Malaysia, The Journey and Beyond (2014, Caring Pharmacy).
Martin has written two books about Modern Chinese Art with Chinese artist Luo Qi, Luo Qi and Calligraphyism and Commentary by Humanists Canada and China (2017 and 2022), and has had his book about Bangladesh artist Farida Zaman For the Love of Country published in Dhaka in December 2019.
Canada 2022
THE BLUE LOTUS
The Blue Lotus magazine has been published by Martin A Bradley (The
LOTUS BACK ISSUES
(The
Publishing), in Colchester, England, UK, since 2011
