Chan Kar Kah undertook a 3-month residency at Rimbun Dahan from January to April 2022.
During the residency, Kar Kah was developing her full-length work Prajñā Revisited, a multidisciplinary performance with composer Yii Kah Hoe, visual artist Sim Hoi Ling and lighting designer Tan Eng Heng. The work explores local Chinese identities, traditional and contemporary rituals, group memories of the Chinese community, and how these factors affect the Malaysian Chinese dance contexts.
Kar Kah returned to Rimbun Dahan for a short visit in June 2022 to capture video material for a digital video work, as part of the show SERENITY: A Glimpse Through the Traditional Lenses at George Town Festival 2022, in collaboration with cinematographer Joie Koo, dancers Yee Teng and Winnie Xuan, composer Yii Kah Hoe, lighting designer Tan Eng Heng, and visual artist Hoi Ling. The digital work captures still images and subtle movements of the dancers, in contrast with traditional houses at Rimbun Dahan.
About the Artist
Chan Kar Kah (b.1997) is a Malaysian interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, educator, and director of Marrow Collective. Kar Kah was trained in Chinese classical dance, Chinese ethnic folk dance, and contemporary dance at Beijing Normal University. In 2018, she founded Marrow Collective which explores the interstices of dance and visual arts. Kar Kah’s research on local Chinese dance surrounds the ancestral traditions and somatic memories of the Malaysian Chinese community, and their influence on Chinese dance in Malaysia. With later involvement in Chinese opera and Chinese martial arts (Nan Quan), she seeks the commonality between the body movements of these arts and the integration between them in Tanah Melayu. Her works also focus on Chinese philosophy, oriental body movements, and their integrations between the cultural exchanges in Southeast Asia.
Donna Miranda, performing “I have nothing to dance and I am dancing it” as part of Work It! at White Box Gallery, PUBLIKA, Kuala Lumpur in 2012.
20 June 2022
Rimbun Dahan is a private arts centre outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which focuses on developing traditional and contemporary art forms. We also aim to support Southeast Asian artists to strengthen their regional professional artistic networks. Since 1994, we have hosted over hundreds of artists in various disciplines, as well as community-building meetings, conferences and events. For more information about Rimbun Dahan, please see http://www.rimbundahan.org.
Filipina choreographer Donna Miranda was our first resident choreographer at Rimbun Dahan in 2007. At the time, we were delighted to have attracted such an intelligent, accomplished and brave artist, who jumped with both feet into this unknown challenge. During her time with us, Donna made incredible and lasting connections with the local arts community, including musicians and visual artists as well as other dancers. By far one of the most creative and hard working of our choreographic residents, she produced a full-length dance work Extended Period of Waiting, with 7 performers, as well as a performance work in connection with our fundraising exhibition Art for Nature, and also taught a workshop for dancers during her stay.
We retained our connection with Donna, and she subsequently visited Rimbun Dahan again with her partner, poet Angelo Suarez, in 2010 to take part in the one of our first editions of Dancing in Place, our regular program of site-specific dance works. She presented “Anything less is less than a reckless act” which asked the audience to choose whether to watch a video of a dancing duet in one room, or to listen to Donna talking about the dance work in another room. For us, it was a bracing introduction to Donna’s constant questioning of the capacity of art to engage its audience democratically – it both allowed audience participation as well as exposed its futility.
We invited Donna once again to Rimbun Dahan in 2012 to participate in Work It!, a project supported by Asia-Europe Foundation bringing together female performing artists from Asia and Europe whose work revolved around the gendered depiction of the body on stage. As one of only twelve participating artists, Donna was selected on the basis of her portfolio of work, keen intellectual engagement, and understanding of the artistic and socio-political relations between Asia and Europe. She was one of the most active and engaged participants in this project, fearless about calling out the more privileged and about exposing her own vulnerabilities as an artist, as a working mother, and as a citizen engaged with wider concerns of democracy and equity.
In the years that I have known Donna, she has shown the highest standards of integrity in the creation of own art and her engagement with communities in land justice and social empowerment. She is not a terrorist or a vigilante; she is a serious artist with an international presence who is deeply concerned about the future of her country. Rimbun Dahan stands by her and echoes the call to drop all charges against the Tinang 83.
In June 2022, 83 farmers, agrarian reform activists, journalists and artists were arrested at a cultivation exercise in Hacienda Tinang, Tarlac Province, Philippines. The land they were on had been awarded to the farmers in 1995 by the Department for Agrarian Reform. The previous occupier of the land, currently the local mayor, disputes the ownership. The 83 were released on bail, but now face charges of malicious mischief and illegal assembly, as well as disobedience, obstruction of justice, and usurpation of real rights. In addition, Donna Miranda and some others have been charged with child exploitation and trafficking, for bringing their children to participate in the activity.
Our first digital art and projection mapping artist, Abdul Shakir spent a month at Rimbun Dahan from mid April to mid May 2022, experimenting with projections on organic surfaces, and producing visual elements inspired by the traditional carvings and other artefacts at Rimbun Dahan.
About the Artist
Abdul Shakir (also known as ‘Grasshopper’) is a multidisciplinary multimedia digital artist and one of the co-founders of Filamen, which focuses on projection mapping, light installation and interactive installation projects. Shakir has worked in post-production and production agencies, and has done various projects related to design and art: graphic design, motion graphics, projection mapping and interactive installation. His projects have gone beyond Malaysia and reached an international level, displaying his works in China, Hong Kong, Spain, and the USA. Some of the notable platforms in which he has shown his work are LAMPU Festival, Urbanscapes Art Festival, Rainforest in the City, and George Town Festival.
Throughout my one month residency at Rimbun Dahan, I managed to experiment on two bodies of work. The first, and also the main one, is the “Organic Projection Mapping”. Most of my previous projection mapping works were done mainly on manmade objects such as buildings and vehicles. This residency enabled me to start experimenting with organic projections, where I could explore the mapping process on living organisms such as leaves and trees. The process is different from the normal projection mapping I usually do. Instead of having mappings done based on existing blueprints or templates, I get to experience impromptu mapping on-site.
In total, I’ve managed to do 4 mapping sessions around the Rimbun Dahan compound. Thanks to the facilities provided, I was able to do this without technical difficulties although it was done during the night time.
My daytimes at Rimbun Dahan were filled with visual developments. I managed to produce more than 30 visual elements, rendered out every day. These visual elements were then composed into motifs, inspired by traditional carvings and objects around Rimbun Dahan.
I also managed to share my practice with other residence artists here at Rimbun Dahan. It was such an interesting session as we opened up to each others’ thought processes and will, hopefully, lead up to collaborative projects in the near future.
On my final night in Rimbun Dahan, I compiled all the visual motifs I had produced during my stay and arranged and composed them to be projected onto the facade of the heritage house Rumah Uda Manap. I decided to bring this house back to life by introducing vibrant elements that are inspired by the surroundings in Rimbun Dahan. The idea is to give back to Rimbun Dahan, of everything I have gained here.
Malaysian multidisciplinary artist and textile designer Shan Shan Lim joined us for a 3-month residency from March to May 2022.
About The Residency
Shan Shan approached her time with us as an opportunity to explore the boundaries of her artistic expression. Not content with limiting her work to a single medium, she experimented with cotton, wool, popsicle sticks, rice paper and linoleum. And the experimentation did not end there. Having foraged rocks from our forest at Rimbun Dahan and a local waterfall, she extracted earth pigments to concoct her own palette of natural paints. Taking the experiment further and drawing on her background as a weaver, she hand-dyed yarns using the Malaysian ikat technique and created a series of textile pieces. The resulting mixed media collection, a journey from the tangible to the abstract, is titled ‘The Shadow Self’.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” — Carl Jung
We all carry a shadow. It represents a side of ourselves we choose to ignore. By focusing on the shadows cast by the world around her, Shan Shan unearthed her own shadow. For inspiration, she did not have to venture too far beyond her studio. Rimbun Dahan’s wealth of local flora offered up silhouettes of seeds, leaves, flowers, branches and herbs. The collection encourages us to find beauty in the overlooked shadow world that is tied to every blade of grass and every human being that walks the planet.
About The Artist
Shan Shan Lim (b.1993) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her works draw inspiration from a spectrum of cultures from her childhood in Malaysia, schooling in India and her bachelor’s in London. She specialised in weave and print at Central Saint Martins, earning a degree in Textile Design. She returned home to Malaysia where she founded her eponymous design studio in 2017.
Her work is a means to make sense of her environment, both physical and incorporeal. They reflect a search for harmony and spiritual freedom in a world of chaos. Each piece is a question simultaneously posed and answered, using intuition as her guide.
Her most notable exhibitions include Lokal Helsinki (2021), The Back Room (2020), Deck, Singapore (2020) and Bank Negara Malaysia (2018). She was also selected for the Art Girl Rising residency at Sepat House (2019).
Malaysian visual artist Lee Mok Yee spent two months at Rimbun Dahan from March to April 2022 exploring different materials from Rimbun Dahan and its surroundings, creating structures connecting body and architecture.
About the Artist
Lee Mok Yee is a Malaysia visual artist and drummer born in Klang, a port town near the capital city, Kuala Lumpur, where he currently lives and works. A graduate of Dasein Academy of Art and the Fine Art program at Middlesex University of London, Mok Yee is an artist whose work is primarily concerned with the entanglement between the conceptual and the material.
His work is process-focused and often interrogative of the aspect of ‘materials’ in art-making, choosing to work with ready-made or store-bought objects. Mok Yee re-arranges these materials as an act of interrogation against uniformity; pushing against the boundaries of function in mass-production, and in the re/arranging he questions the idea of moving within structures as an exploration of change and its futilities.
During his 2-month residency at Rimbun Dahan, Mok Yee explored different materials inspired by Rimbun Dahan and the Malay kampung surroundings. Using scrap wood and PVC carpet that he bought from stores nearby, he attempted to build structures which connected body and architecture. The outcome was a study of materials, pending further exploration in this series of works.
Mok Yee also resumed his study of techniques he had used previously, creating drawings using charcoal on paper, and etchings on kitchenware. For Mok Yee, this practice was a kind of collective process of memory and form inspired by Rimbun Dahan.
Malaysian weaver and textile artist Cheong See Min is in residence at Rimbun Dahan from March to June 2022.
About the Artist
Cheong See Min is an artist, weaver and textile artist from Johor Bahru, Malaysia. She obtained a Master of Fine Art degree from the Graduate Institute of Applied Art in Tainan National University of Art, Taiwan, in 2020, and a Bachelor of Fine Art from Tunghai University, Taiwan, in 2017. In 2017, she received Nando’s Art Initiative Second Runner Up award and was also selected for Bakat Muda Sezaman Young Contemporaries 2019. In 2021, her work was also selected for the International Biennale Exhibition of Micro Textile Art “Scythia”, Ivano-Frankivs’k, Ukraine.
“I am an obsessive street observer and “collect” the way people unconsciously place their belongings in their neighbourhood. The rhetoric of object placement from the alleyways has inspired me and become the theme and motif in my artworks. Collecting materials from the street and recreating them within the concept of “textile”, my artworks are a collection of my memories and past experiences about the daily objects and people in places I have lived. In my works, I portray stories through textiles and the found objects, building self-understanding through the process.”
In this three-month project, I plan to collect dried leaves, tree bark and fruit found in the garden of Rimbun Dahan, to dye with yarns and to produce a series of small artworks with the weaving techniques I have learnt in this time. Being resident in Rimbun Dahan full time, I believe it will draw me into different perspectives and comparisons between Malaysia and Taiwan, and will nurture my work in the tropical garden.
From 5 to 27 March 2022, Rimbun Dahan presented an exhibition by Hijjas bin Kasturi, our permanent artist in residence, made during the pandemic.
We were delighted to have Beverly Yong as our curator, helping us to select from hundreds of works that Hijjas has made. The exhibition included oil paintings and acrylics on canvas, enamel on board, and works on paper. Works were for sale, with portion of the proceeds going to charity.
About the Exhibition
Through the pandemic, Rimbun Dahan has harboured an unexpected artist in residence – Hijjas Kasturi himself. During this time, he has made over 300 paintings, an extraordinary undertaking, whose ambition is rivalled only by its sheer range.
We think of Hijjas Kasturi as one of our nation builders, giving formal expression to Malaysia’s ambitions, identity and progress in the many iconic structures he has designed that shape our capital’s cityscape and beyond. For Hijjas, art and architecture are closely related, but artists are differentiated by their unique freedom.
Through art, he has gone back to exploring a more personal creative space, painting with no holds barred, taking on every day the challenge of the blank canvas.
He has found inspiration in the garden that Angela has curated and cultivated over three decades, in the art collection and in the life of Rimbun Dahan itself. In coming to the canvas, he finds he is met with the same questions as he has faced as a modern Malaysian architect – how to integrate forms that are meaningful to the local, how to be different and find an expression of self. The process of making has been experimental and intuitive.
The show follows some consistent themes that have grown out of his study of his immediate environment, often building on ideas that relate to a visual vocabulary already embedded in his architectural practice. There are compelling conversations happening between natural, sculptural, architectural and painted forms. In Hijjas’ frenetic, energetic latest foray into art-making, nothing stands still, all is dynamic and changing and bursting to find shape.
Renewal celebrates what it is to explore painting, and the processes of creative intelligence and inspiration. It is very much Hijjas Kasturi in the mode of “Grab it now, and see what we can do”.
Rimbun Dahan invites art enthusiasts and members of the public to visit our grounds and meet our resident artists: printmaker-painter Ong Hieng Fuong and writer-publisher Tan Dee May.
Hieng will open his studio workspace to display and discuss the works he has made during his 6-month residency at Rimbun Dahan. Selected artworks will also be available for purchase.
Tan Dee May will introduce the newest edition of her magazine Plates, also with copies available to purchase.
Rimbun Dahan director Angela Hijjas will show you our new Forest Tree Nursery.
Our two heritage houses will be open for visitors, and you are welcome to stroll around the 14-acre garden.
Admission is free but YOU MUST REGISTER TO ATTEND. Slots in each time session are limited. Register here: https://forms.gle/ZAWW9zqTY6drGtQT8 DATE: 17 October 2020 (Sunday) TIME: ̶
Session 1 — 10am-11:45am
Session 2 — 11:45am-1:30pm
Session 3 — 2:30pm-4:15pm [includes moderated discussion about Plates Issue 4 with Tan Dee May]
Session 4 — 4:15pm-6pm
PLACE: Rimbun Dahan, KM 27 Jalan Kuang 48050 Kuang (near Sungai Buloh) LANDMARKS: Our front gate is opposite Warung Selera Ria and also next to the start of Lorong Belimbing
REMEMBER:
Social distancing restrictions apply. Please wear a mask in all indoor and outdoor areas at Rimbun Dahan, if you are in the company of people not from your own household.
All visitors are required to be fully vaccinated, and be ready to show their vaccination status on MySejahtera upon arrival. Apologies that non-vaccinated minors cannot be admitted.
Please wear mosquito repellent and practical shoes if you are planning to walk around the garden. Bring an umbrella in case of rain.
Apologies, Rimbun Dahan is not a wheelchair accessible venue.
For any questions, please email arts@rimbundahan.org or WhatsApp Angela at +6012-210-4229 or Bilqis at +6017-3103769.
About the Artists
ONG HIENG FUONG (a.k.a Hieng) is a Rimbun Dahan Resident Artist from May to October 2021. An artist from the small fishing town of Tanjung Sepat in Selangor, his works are inspired by the daily aspects of common life, people he meets and places he visits. In 2017, he received Nando’s Art Initiative Grand Prize and UOB’s Painting of the Year award (Emerging Artist Category). He was also named most promising artist of the year by UOB in the same year. In 2019, he received UOB’s Gold Prize for the established artist category. In 2020, the printmaking department of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts officially collected his sketch works produced during his studies. He is currently pursuing his tertiary education at China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts.
TAN DEE MAY was a Rimbun Dahan Resident Artist from October 2020 to April 2021. She is the founder of Plates, an international independent print publication that uses food as a conversation starter for meatier issues, now in its fourth edition. A recipient of multiple awards, including the international Chevening Award (2016); the national INXO Arts Fund Award (2019); the international Can Serrat Writers Residency (Montserrat, Spain, 2020/2021); and The Ideas Festival documentary award (Brisbane, Australia, 2011), Dee May has previously been invited to speak at the Singapore Writers Festival (2019); AMAR Conference (Windsor Castle, UK, 2017); Runway 2.0 Asia Pacific supported by BMW (Kuala Lumpur, 2015).
Malaysian multidisciplinary artist Anjali Venugopal has joined us for a 3-month residency at Rimbun Dahan from June to August 2021.
About the Artist
Born (1995) and raised in Sabah, Anjali Nijjar Venugopal (Anju) graduated from Point College Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur with a Diploma in Film & TV Production.
Anju has always had a rebellious streak in their creative work. They do not like feeling caught or held down within their self expression. Most of their creative works are splayed-out messes, be it in their art performances, films or paintings. They’re always looking to break free from moulds that are constantly created by society to keep us in check. Their paintings are abstract and experimental pieces that are based on their impulses and self expression. They play with colours, different mediums and anything they can get their hands on. They love telling stories and finding different ways to merge their crafts.
Anju started exhibiting their artwork in 2015, back home in Sabah. Since then, they have exhibited their paintings around Malaysia. They exhibit their artwork yearly in Sabah Art Gallery under the “Sabah Women Art Exhibition”s. Anju has exhibited their work in Japan in ”Building Bridges” (2016 ) and “Celebrating Life” (2018) in Gallery Mona, Tokyo. Apart from painting, Anju has 9 years of experience writing, acting, directing and art directing in theatre. Among their theatre works are “Puck and the Mechanicals Do a Performance in 8 Minutes” (2020), “To Which My Brother Laughed;” (2019), “Indicinelive! 6” (2019), “Teater Modular: Kurator Dapur” (2018), and “FAMILY” (2017). They also actively work in front and behind the camera in film productions. Their recent experimental film project “To Perdure”, which explores the idea of maintaining oneself through hardship, was funded by CENDANA’S Create Now Funding Programme. Anju is a curator for Malam Sayu, a performance art initiative which received a grant from INXO Art Fund 2019, which has hosted multiple open mics, outdoor performances, writing circles and makes art films. Anju‘s poetry has also been published in the KL Spoken Word Anthology When I Say ‘Spoken’, You Say ‘Word’. Anju was highlighted in CLEO Magazine’s COOL KL 2020 as “individuals making a change creatively and the youth who are impacting society in every way”.
Other than currently drawing and painting the bugs that have been swarming me here at Rimbun Dahan, I am interested to explore the idea “To Create, To Destroy, To Put Back Together Again”. This idea started out as frustration with the need to keep creating as a way to prove my worth and how I would like to destroy it all and find myself once again within the rubble. But since arriving here and journaling a lot, I have realised that a lot of life includes being destroyed and being rebuilt. One example is a caterpillar and how within a cocoon it completely liquifies itself before reforming again and becoming a moth. The same thing happens around us, in ourselves, our relationships, life and death, and in society. I am keen to explore a lot of questions I have been asking myself through different mediums of art. What are the ways to destroy? What exactly gets destroyed? How heavy is the emotional toll linked to destroying? What does destroying, creating and starting again mean? What is it like to continuously pick up the pieces? Is destroying always linked to rage and are there different types of rage? What is rebuilding and the difference between willingly rebuilding and forced rebuilding? I am using the time, space and energy that Rimbun Dahan offers to properly delve into my exploration and hopefully answer all these questions (or not).
Malaysian visual artist Ong Hieng Fuong undertook a 6-month residency at Rimbun Dahan from May to October 2021, creating a series of limited edition woodcut prints and paintings in watercolour and poster paint which recorded immensely detailed observations of his surroundings.
Please click on the images below to view more details and larger versions.
Words from the Artist
My artworks are the documentation of my memories and past experiences about people, daily matters and objects in Malaysia. They are Ukiyo-E pieces about the society we live in.
In my artworks, you can see people and places that I met, visited and experienced. Following the flow of time and the development of our country, these memorable people and places are gradually disappearing. I try to capture these past and present aspects and visualize them in my artworks. In my works, I embrace different aspects including but not limited to human character, architecture, food, politics, religions, business, behaviour and environmental problems. You can also notice a huge number of little details in my work, the inspiration come from my memories and experiences. They also project the same mistakes that people never cease to make and society problems in our country that have existed for a long time.
In this 3-month project, I plan to utilize the techniques I learnt in China (Woodcut Print), two mediums (Poster Colors and Acrylic) to produce a batch of small/medium artworks that would present my core ideas.
After experiencing the landscapes of China, I want to make full use of my time here in Malaysia doing the same but in the tropical setting of our country’s rainforests. I believe through experiencing life in a different setting will draw me a vivid comparison of both worlds and introduce new perspectives to my work.
I believe art is a medium to present personal experience, not just pure imagination. Getting a chance to put myself through this experience will be very beneficial to my work. I look forward to creating new works at Rimbun Dahan.
About the Artist
Ong Hieng Fuong (a.k.a Hieng) is an artist from Tanjung Sepat, Selangor, Malaysia. Growing up in a small fishing town where the pace of life is much slower, he got to experience the daily aspects of common life to its fullest, which is a major source of his inspiration. In his artworks, you can see people that he met and places he visited and experienced. He feels that following the flow of time and the development of our country, memorable people and places in our memories fade away and disappear along with small aspects of our lives.
Capturing these aspects, he presents them in his works which are of astonishing detail. The aspects materialize as characters, architecture and objects in his works while describing the politics, religions and social behavior of people in our country. Through his work, he also implicitly portrays problems that have long existed in our society and country, which he hopes to invoke thoughts of reflection in ourselves.
In 2017, he received Nando’s Art Initiative Grand Prize and UOB’s Painting of the Year award (Emerging Artist Category). He was also named most promising artist of the year by UOB in the same year. In 2019, he received UOB’s Gold Prize for the established artist category. In 2020, the printmaking department of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts officially collected his sketch works produced during his studies. He is currently pursuing his tertiary education at the China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts.
