AMELIORATE. It's certainly a whopper of a word. Yet, the meaning is deceptively simple: To make something bad better.
We live in a broken world today. We shuffle around, burdened and anxious, glued to tiny screens, living fossils in an archaeology of traumas — political, social, economic, ecological — that seem to be activated all at once. Faced with a crippling pandemic, there does not seem to be any form of leadership in sight capable of steering us and the planet to safety.
If the powerful have run out of ideas beyond clinging to wealth and control in the face of catastrophe, art reminds us that there are other options.
Ameliorate. Turn the bad to good.
Turn the ugly into beautiful.
Turn the discarded into something useful.
Turn trash into art.
In this season, more than ever, we turn our eyes to art that refuses to abdicate: exhibitions and projects that offer solutions, hope, and beckon us towards thinking outside the box.
Galeri Prima's latest exhibition, aptly titled Ameliorate, should be a good start. The mission — to present artists from all different walks of life — is crucial in this period of national isolation. And the exhibition's theme, "Regain the Past, Restore the Present, Reinvent the Future", which has to do with overlooked materials, decay and renewal, seems rather apt.
THREATENED WORLD
Most of human history has been defined by our use of materials, from the Stone Age through the Bronze and Iron Ages. The industrial age, which began in the late 18th century, has been marked by large-scale technological advancements that have allowed us to mass produce out of steel, plastic and wood, albeit at a great cost to the planet.
Saving the planet isn't just the subject of passionate political debate. It's at the heart of a growing number of exhibitions this year, including the works of old masters and exhibits built with high-tech innovations, designed to inspire artistic appreciation and a desire to respond to environmental challenges.
As art comes to grips with its own culpability in the climate crisis, the concept of upcycling by simply using what would otherwise be tossed into landfill has begun to trickle out to many layers of the art world.
Unlike traditional recycling, where materials such as plastic and paper are gradually degraded and can only be reused for a limited number of times, upcycling turns waste into products of greater value. That offers hope for achieving the biggest goal of environmentally minded design — using materials again and again to keep them out of landfills.
In a perfect sustainable world, we wouldn't need to worry about issues that affect our lives, namely climate change, pollution, overpopulation, waste disposal, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, deforestation and ozone layer depletion, among others.
But the world we live in today is far from perfect. In the pursuit of modernisation, we tend to forget and neglect the environment which is being increasingly threatened and greedily gnawed in the name of development.
Environmentally threatening activities are becoming more prevalent and alarming. If not managed properly, the next generation will suffer as a result of our action today. Reflecting on these ecological perils, many contemporary artists have become climate activists, using their work as a platform to raise awareness and imagine a more sustainable future.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown to all of us that global, collectivised action against existential threat is actually possible. And art can be a beacon of hope, lighting the way and compelling us to act.
MESSAGE OF HOPE
Galeri Prima has turned the foyer of its gallery into an impressive ocean of marine waste to reflect the amount of trash in our lives. The waste had been collected over a period of five months and will later be recycled into useful items.
Ameliorate aims to engage the public in a dialogue that includes environmental protection, recycling and the environment through a display of works by emerging and senior artists, who are responding to the urgent call of the environment.
The works of these artists are diverse in terms of ideas, material processing, style and technical mastery. Although there are marked differences in their oeuvre, each carries the common message of protecting the environment. The goal of the exhibition is to view art through ecological glasses: how the environment is represented in installations and how our place in the world is depicted.
More than 30 artists are participating in the exhibition, including Ramlan Abdullah, Rosli Zakaria, Sharmiza Abu Hassan, Fauzin Mustafa, Zakaria Sharif, Liu Cheng Hua, Idrus Rani, Faiz Yunus, Nor Tijan Firdaus, Nicholas Choong, Azmi Amran, Aimman Hafizal, Amirul Yazid, Daniel Aizatt and Faisa Saari.
These artists are not merely recycling, or "upcycling," as the contemporary design language goes, but rather, they're re-envisioning garbage as both an abundant and largely untapped resource, one that can be manipulated via technology, creativity and artistry into objects that are beautiful in their own right.
There's a crescendo of interest in both art that is in itself about the environment and art that is self-consciously environmental. And that's entirely understandable and good because it draws attention to these dire situations that we're facing.
Galleries like Galeri Prima have the power to help promote good and active citizenship, and to act as agents of social change. Today, artists, activists and curators are coming together and creating objects and images to inspire and empower people to be critical thinkers and to engage as active participants in making the world a better place to live in.
Although each artist's canvas may be very different, the exhibition has one thing in common: using a mixture of materials, ideas and collaborators to express something that can, at times, appear to be indescribable.
Save the environment. Protect nature. Recycle. Reduce the amount of trash you generate. Those messages ring through the entire exhibition. And who knows? These works might just smash through some of the warped lenses through which we've been taught to see.
AMELIORATE: Regain the Past, Restore the Present, Reinvent the Future
When: Until November 23
Where: Galeri Prima, Balai Berita, 31 Jalan Riong, Kuala Lumpur
Time: 10am to 6pm daily. Weekends by appointment.