I recently attended the Malaysian Eye exhibition and book launch. I do not agree with all the 75 artists selected by them to represent contemporary Malaysian Art in the book – but that is to be expected, as all of us will have different opinions on what represents “good” contemporary Malaysian art. My commentary here is more on their process of selection, which I find to be poorly executed. Basically, as I understand it (and I stand corrected), the people from Parallel Contemporary Art - the husband and wife team, David and Serenella - flew into Malaysia, met up with a whole bunch of “art people” (curators, gallerists, collectors, artists) over a few weeks, selected 200+ artists and asked (by email) for their CVs plus 10 images each, then based on the images (and those artists who replied) got an International selection panel (none of whom are Malaysians if I may add) to select the 75 top Malaysian contemporary artists. All in 3-4 months! Firstly, in my humble opinion there was a shocking lack of research on contemporary Malaysian art/art practices by the organisers. When Rogue Art did the “Today and Tomorrow, Emerging Practices in Malaysian Art” – it took them 2 years of research etc. I am sorry but just asking a select group of “art people” who they think are the contemporary Malaysian artists to look out for, doesn’t constitute research. Secondly, they should select the 75 artists, not pick 200+ artists, and then ask them to submit their images for review. This is not a Malaysian Top Model competition! And I know of artists who did not submit their works (either in protest, or they just couldn’t be bothered), so how can this be a proper representation of contemporary Malaysian art? Thirdly, I object to a group of non-Malaysians defining for us what constitutes Malaysian contemporary art. I spoke to one collector, and he told me that the organizers told him that so-and-so artist is of “international standard”. Do we need some outsiders who just parachute in for 2-3 weeks to tell us what is contemporary Malaysian art? I am sorry but this kind of neo-colonialism western “we know better” attitude is so passe. Fourthly, I find it amazing that these curators can judge an art work just by seeing the image. For me, there is no substitute for seeing the actual art work. You need to see it in different lighting, from different angles, see the texture, the paint strokes, medium etc. You need to understand the context in which the artist is making the work. Fifthly, the images selected should be independently judged to be the best works of that particular artists - not the works which images the artist gave to the selection panel (i.e images which presumably the artists thought represented their best works). For example, if you only looked at the book, you would think that Siew Ying only did charcoal paintings (when she’s famous for her smiley faces). So whilst they aspire to the heights of a defining Malaysian contemporary art book, their efforts don’t fall far from the coffee table.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 04:12:52 +0000