Bebas is a collection of works of different themes, exploring an artist’s creative journey in the past eight years, writes Sarah NH Vogeler
IT’S hard living in two countries. It’s sort of like being caught in permanent jetlag.When you commute over 13,483km, the senses go into overdrive. You wake up most mornings wondering where you are and what you are.
In Suhaimi Fadzir’s case, it’s 15,080km between here and St Louis, Missouri, where he resides with his family. The artist shuttles back and forth. Meeting a fellow Malaysian who lives where my dad comes from is, well, serendipitous, and a lovely one at that. The first hour was spent reminiscing and the heart suddenly breaks from intense missing.
Viewing Suhaimi’s works, a labour of eight year stitled Bebas, or Free, one immediately gets his love for both homes. His paintings and sculptures are brimmed with elements from the two. Bebas is segregated into several series:Food on the Table, Jawi/Neon, Merdeka and Karat. An architect who graduated from the Washington University in St Louis, the artist’s compositions all possess those microscopic architectural twists. Everything is scaled thoroughly, measured, precise and concise but the works in no way compromises beauty, not of the conventional, but rather the strange and warped.
Ferguson (For The People), Ferguson (Hands Up, Don’t Shoot) and Ferguson Story, stand out. These are striking examples of how art and structural designs complement and influence one another. Completed in 2014 of mixed media assemblage and light fittings, the story which triggered the works is personal. Suhaimi had a show in Ferguson when the riots broke out after the fatal shooting of student Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson. The unclear environments of the shooting of the weaponless man sparked prevailing tensions in the primarily black city, where demonstrations and civil unrest broke out. The three works were Suhaimi’s interpretations of what transpired, his way of rousing awareness and action. The assemblies are a “coordinated” mess, which he calls “archipainting”, a de-constructivist aim to bring forth the production and merging of concepts and configurations. In other words, the artist uses found objects to tell us his stories in bold and confrontational ways. His Ferguson is a mad vortex of brutality, agony and anguish, but also, that transcendence emerges after the horror.
From his Merdeka series, we get a whopping 213cm x 1,278 cm work in six panels, 2012-13 Standing Tall. Chronicling our Prime Ministers’ time in office from the first to current, Suhaimi’s story-telling talent is engaging, a history lesson in six panes. You don’t notice it at first, (the artist maintained its shape but uses blackened hues) but on the right side of each panel, nestled against an array of glass bottles, is a replica of American artist Jeff Koons’ anti-consumerist sculpture Balloon Venus. The original is made of stainless steel, which Koons described as “an artificial luxury, a proletarian material which I could melt and turn into pots and pans”. Its presence in Standing Tall could be the artist’s subtle yet witty way of echoing Koons, “We should learn to preserve political and economic power rather than strive for luxury.”
Another which captured attention is the 2015 triptych Hishamuddin Hussein Onn. In a nutshell, Datuk Seri Onn Jaafar was the founder of United Malays National Organisationand the chief minister of Johor. His son, Tun Datuk Hussein Onn, was Malaysia’s third Prime Minister and his son, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein is our Minister of Defence, and also the cousin of our Prime Minister, DatukSeri Najib Razak. In this triptych, Suhaimi paints these eminent leaders stricken, distorted, unflattering. Again, this is one artist who’s not riveted by conventional beauty. Leaders are placed in unenviable positions, no matter what they do they’re loved and feared and hated, and then loved and feared and hated more and again. The cycle is insane, their responsibilities unbelievable. The displacement of facial features is explosive. It makes one shun mirrors completely for fear of what might be staring back.
From St Louis born poet T.S. Eliot, excerpts of Wasteland, of which he described as “the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life. Just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.” He wrote much of this poem in 1933 while recovering at a sanatorium in Lausanne, Switzerland:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantihshantihshantih
And if Bebas is Suhaimi Fadzir’s own rhythmical grumbling, it’s a distinctive one. And welcomed.
Modern nomad
Suhaimi FADZIR has exhibited internationally in several solo and group shows, among them The Dublin Biennale where he won theAward of Excellence in 2012, the prestigious 12th and 13th Venice Biennale (Architecture), Venice, Italy in 2010 and 2012, as well as alongside, photographer Ansel Adams in America and was granted the Art Saint Louis Residency programmes in the US. His work has been extensively collected in public and private collections in Malaysia, Korea, Ireland, China, US, Indonesia, Singapore, UK, Japan, The Philippines, Spain, Uzbekistan, Germany and Mexico.
Perak-born Suhaimi trained as an architect in the 1980s at the Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. Despite this he has always viewed himself foremost as an artist. Personifying a modern nomad, he maintains two studios, one in Malaysia and one in America. His constant shift and cultural receptiveness between the two countries offers him unique insights into local social themes, be they environmental, political or historical, and allows him to merge them with Western art, architecture and Abstract Expressionist and pop icon references. In his own words, travel creates discourse and discussion that enhances his understanding of his subject and audiences that help himproduce work that’s highly relatable and entertaining yet filled with cultural resonance.
Bebas
When Until mid-May
Monday - Friday, 11am to 8pm
Saturday and Sunday, 12pm to 6pm
Where Art Cube
3-10 & 3-13, level 3, Intermark Mall, The Intermark, 348 Jalan Tun Razak, KL
Details at www.artcube.com.my