Resident Artist

Si Jie Loo

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Purposeful Strides 猛志逸四海 by Si Jie Loo

Si Jie Loo is a multi-disciplinary artist who is interested in capturing the spirit of humanity, primarily with Chinese Ink. She graduated from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA with an honors in Studio Art and has since lived and worked in both US and Malaysia. As an artist in the diaspora, she is constantly on the move between places, cultures, music genres and languages. She inks down captivating people, musicians, dancers and nature during her travels, most recently the Tibetan plateau and the Silk Road in Northeast China. She calls this body of work INKounters and further develops larger abstract paintings that convey that essence in another series INKnovations.

Her spontaneous and dynamic strokes are generated from her ever-wandering eyes and ready-to-go ink brush and paper in her pocket. Behind the scenes, she eagerly search for inspirations, whether it is from traveling, reading, calligraphy, visits at the museums and art galleries, music, drum or dance sessions, concerts, and/or art residencies.

Si Jie hopes to use this residency to ask questions such as: What’s the future of Chinese Ink Painting? If it were an important Nanyang (Southeast Asian) heritage and legacy, how can it blossom and grow beyond the Malaysian Chinese art circle? How can she innovate within a tradition that has once inspired the likes of Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin? How can she expand the medium’s limitations by collaborating with other artists of dance, music and theater background?

Southeast Asia is an exciting hub of trades and inter-cultural exchange. Its tropical colors and wide array of craft and folk arts were subjects of studies for many foreign scholars and local artists. Si Jie wishes to immerse herself at her residency at Rimbun Dahan, to share her understanding of the new and the old based on her own cultural roots that she re-discovered upon returning from abroad, thereby expanding her repertoire to a contemporary Malaysia that she and many other artists aspire to shape.

Si Jie’s work can be found online at her website. Footage of her painting processes and interviews can be found on her YouTube channel. She has also posted her residency statement of purpose in full here. Si Jie will be a resident artist at Rimbun Dahan from October to December.

Si Jie Loo with her mentor Malaysia's Chinese Ink Painting Master Dr. Cheah Thien Soong.
Si Jie Loo with her mentor Malaysia’s Chinese Ink Painting Master Dr. Cheah Thien Soong

Le Hoang Bich Phuong

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Paeonia Dream (2013) by Le Hoang Bich Phuong

Le Hoang Bich Phuong (b. 1984) is a visual artist based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Her art is an outlet for expression and a means to deliver her concerns regarding sexuality and eccentricity. Recently, Phuong’s focus has shifted more toward nature, time, space and social awareness in her country, Vietnam.

Even though Vietnamese culture doesn’t emphasize on individuality, I often wonder about the state of individuality in the other countries. My works are usually a blend of imagery of human sexual organs twisted into seemingly familiar distortions and contrast elements that do not seem to belong together. For me, these unlikely combinations often create the perfect piece. I have been using Vietnamese traditional silk paintings as my primary medium, but I always experiment with new mediums as it could be the new language in my art. I enjoy reflecting my thoughts on contemporary issues through art, using traditional medium and materials as a way to challenge to the dogmas of society.

To view more of Phuong’s work, visit her website. You can also view the process of making one of her works (pictures below), here on YouTube.

ERYN @ Winnie Cheng

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Works from Strange Botanicals

ERYN uses a combination of pen and marker drawing, watercolour, acrylic painting and papercutting techniques to create meticulously detailed compositions filled with strange creatures in an otherworldly setting. Her use of fine lines to create form is largely inspired by book illustrations and the comic and animation industry. She focuses on themes of introversion and looking inwards to reflect on the interactions she experiences in her daily life.

These themes of introversion plays out in imaginary landscapes inspired by lush tropical rainforests, the frozen arctic plains, and even the dry unforgiving desert. Each landscape is shaped by thoughts and emotions in her mind and the process is at once aware yet unconscious. These landscapes are also removed from the mundane laws of physics, gravity, and proportion. Through this the artist creates a dreamlike quality in order to bring the viewer into an inner space to experience both the mysterious and the extraordinary.

ERYN was in residency at Hotel Penaga from September to November 2016. Her residency culminated in a one day exhibition, Strange Botanicals, in the hotel’s Reading Room. You can view photos here on Facebook.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Grace Blake

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Stills from Untitled video, 3 channel colour video, 9:16, 2016

Grace Blake is a visual artist working between Canberra and Sydney. She is currently completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts in printmaking and drawing with a Bachelor of Arts art history from ANU.

Her fascination with the virtual landscape manifests in works that map the line between real and simulated. Blake acts as a cartographer of boundless digital space where the tension between the natural dimensions has been compressed into binary logic.

Currently Blake’s studio practice is working to examine ecologies, resulting in attempts to parallel dense natural ecologies with those that exist in data centers and online. Trans-humanism and future predictions of dense mega-city infrastructure lead toward an interest in arcologies. Various Archo-structures will be examined across animation, installation and interactive web platforms with using both recorded-footage and 3D generated material.

Blake was recently included in group show ‘My Feet Would Hurt If They Still Existed’ at Alaska Projects, ‘Personal Geographies’ at the ANU School of Art Foyer gallery and ‘SafARI 2016’.

She is currently on the Australian New Colombo Plan Scholarship studying and interning in Thailand and Singapore and will undergo a three month residency at Rimbun Dahan from August to October.

Soraya Abidin

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Soraya Abidin

Soraya Abidin (b. 1971) is a textile artist based in Sydney, Australia. The subjects and materials she uses to create her works are born of a love for the Primitive and Spiritual practices within her Malay cultural heritage. Soraya embroiders in natural raffia representing matter from the jungle and embellishes with gold leaf, as a mark of status and the prestigious gold culture worn by her aristocratic ancestors. During as recent visit to Malaysia, where her father is from, interpreted inquiries of her family members revealed her art making practice as an inherent genetic trait directly traceable to her Malay culture, which the artist expands on below:

“I am an Embroidress, the only member in the entire family that has inherited the passion for Benang Emas Sulaman from my Opah (grandmother). I have studied my parents wedding photos for many years, loving and attempting to recreate the motifs seen on all the wedding decorations. I had no idea these works even still existed, till I showed copies of the wedding photos to my family and the next thing I knew these incredible items where in front of me, in my hands to touch and marvel at the perfection of each piece. It was then that I learnt all the embroidered pieces in the photographs had been made by my Opah.

I never could have imagined what this information would do for me, so astounding that I am finally able to make this connection. Now I understand my passion for Embroidery has a strong thread directly linked to my inherent bloodline. This may seem simple but to me it provides powerful and auspicious meaning to the medium I have always instinctually gravitated towards as an artist. Now I have found the origins of my practice and that I am the one to carry on the family tradition.

During the residency I would like to study the use of motifs in traditional Malay textiles, Tekat and Songket, and gather motifs and their meanings to create a glossary for reference in my artmaking. I would like to create an artwork representing my cross cultural parentage, by use of the Traditional Quilting practices of my Australian mother, layered and embedded with embroidered Islamic Arts motifs of my Malay father.

The work will be embroidered with natural raffia and pure white silks and embellish with gold leaf, metallic threads and glass beads. My focus will be on the selection and placement of motifs that are layered over a quilt top created by my mother. The base cloth will be embellished with a combination of appliqued silks motifs then layered with interconnecting embroidered Malay motifs, intentionally leaving gaps and spaces to create a cross cultural conversation in both the positive and negative space.

The intention of the work is to portray a new found clarity and definition in my identity. Through the layering of motifs and utilisation of the powerful meanings in their symbolism to bind together the genetic behavioural traits of my two cultural heritages.”

Soraya will be in residency at Rimbun Dahan for the month of August. You can find more of Soraya and her work on Instagram.

Riel Jaramillo Hilario

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Riel Jaramillo Hilario

Riel Jaramillo Hilario (b. 1976) is a Filipino visual artist and curator, and was born in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, Philippines, which like George Town, is declared a UNESCO Heritage Site. He is a sculptor, painter and an art historian and was the curator for the Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo, Rizal.

Hilario’s main body of work are hand-carved wood figures inspired by rebultos, a colonial art form of religious statuary that was introduced from Spain to the Philippines by way of Mexico in the 1600s to the late 1900’s. Hilario uses the rebulto depicting subjects that are “para-psychological” phenomena, such as presences, place memories, popular mythologies and dreams. For the artist this practice fulfills the need “to render visual” that which are unseen. For his residency at Hotel Penaga in the month of August, Hilario will deploy “Place Memory” – a project that attempts to collect and take note of, occluded and manifested presences and psychic histories in and around spaces in George Town.

Hilario is a Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Awardee (2012). His work has been shown in several exhibitions in Adelaide, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Basel, Delhi, New York, Paris and Berlin. He has been artist-in-residence in Paris at the Cite Internationale des Arts (2012) and in New York at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2013) as a fellow of the Asian Cultural Council.

Riel was a Hotel Penaga resident for August 2016. For more information on Riel’s work, please visit his website.

Irwan Sofwan

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Irwan Sofwan

Irwan Sofwan is a poet and writer from Indonesia. His biography is written below in his mother tongue with a rough translation appended after:

Irwan lahir dan tinggal di Serang, Banten – Indonesia. Karya-karyanya terdapat dalam beberapa buku antologi puisi bersama, di antaranya: Dari Batas Waktu ke Perjalanan Kamar sampai Kabar dari Langit (2006), Candu Rindu (2009), Akulah Musi (2011), Narasi Tembuni (2012) dan juga di beberapa media massa.

Sehari-hari ia bekerja sebagai guru Bahasa dan Sastera Indonesia di SMP PGRI 2 Kota Serang dan aktif berkegiatan di Kubah Budaya (Komunitas untuk Perubahan Budaya) – sebuah komunitas sastera dan budaya yang didirikannya bersama Wan Anwar (alm) dan beberapa kawan satu angkatan. Ia kemudian dipercaya menjabat sebagai ketua Kubah Budaya dari tahun 2006 ke 2009. Bergelut dan berdiskusi bersama komunitas membuatnya lebih mencintai dunia sastera dan semakin terjerumus ke dalam belantara puisi. Puisi seolah menjadi magnet yang menarik keinginannya untuk selalu menulis dan berkarya, meski ia juga sesekali menulis esei dan beberapa artikel yang berkaitan dengan sastera  dan dunia pendidikan.

Baginya, menulis puisi adalah mencatat kehidupan. Mengekalkan sekaligus menyatukan pengetahuan, pengalaman batin dan pikiran untuk kemudian dilepaskan mengarungi lautan kehidupan itu sendiri. Dalam lawatannya ke Rimbun Dahan sebagai artist resident, ia berharap dan akan berusaha untuk menemukan pengetahuan dan pengalaman-pengalaman itu – yang seutuhnya baru – untuk diolah kembali menjadi karya-karya yang memiliki corak berbeda dengan karya-karya yang ia tulis sebelumnya.

Sekarang, Irwan sedang menyiapkan puisi-puisinya untuk diterbitkan dalam sebuah buku yang akan menjadi buku kumpulan puisi pertamanya. Menjadi penyair dan guru adalah hal yang tidak pernah ia cita-citakan semenjak kecil, namun ia bersyukur dapat menjalaninya sekarang ini. Ia pun percaya dengan apa yang dituliskan Herwan FR (penyair, guru dan sahabat) dalam sebuah ulasan untuknya, “Penyair yang baik adalah penyair yang santun. Penyair yang santun adalah penyair yang rendah hati. Penyair yang santun dan rendah hati, berkemungkinan besar termasuk penyair yang beriman dan beraamal sholeh, sehingga terhindar dari azab Tuhan, karena penyair, menurut tuhan, adalah orang yang suka mengembara ke lembah-lembah khayalan. Maka sebagai penyair dan guru adalah sebuah kenikmatan yang harus disyukuri, sebagaimana seorang penyair dan sekaligus kyai.”

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Irwan was born and lives in Serang, Baten in Indonesia. His works have appeared in a few poetry anthologies, such as Dari Batas Waktu ke Perjalanan Kamar sampai Kabar dari Langit (2006), Candu Rindu (2009), Akulah Musi (2011), Narasi Tembuni (2012) and have also appeared in other mass media.

His day job is as a teacher of Indonesian language and literature SMP PGRI 2 Kota Serang, and he is also active in Kubah Budaya (Community to Change Culture) – a cultural and literary community founded by himself, colleague and friend Wan Anwar, and a few other peers. Irwan was entrusted with the heading Kubah Budaya from 2006 to 2009. Engaging and conversing with the community increased and deepened his love for literature and involvement with poetry. Poetry to him became like a magnet for his deep interest in writing every day; he has also written a few essays about the world of literature and education.

To him, writing poetry is to record life, a way to preserve as well as unite knowledge, experience, and thought to then be released into the flow and waves of each person’s life. During his residency at Rimbun Dahan, he hopes to discover new knowledge and experiences to be formed into works that contain different patterns to works he has written before.

Currently, Irwan is working on writing poems for his first poetry collection. Being a teacher and a poet was something he never even dreamed of, but he is grateful now for the opportunity to be both. He believes in what Herman FR (poet, teacher, and friend) once wrote, “A good poet is a poet that is a mannered poet. A mannered poet is a humble poet. A mannered and humble poet has a high likelihood of becoming a poet of deep belief and piety, escaping the punishments of God – because poets, according to God, are those who like to explore the wilderness of fantasy and the imagination. Therefore to be both a poet and a teacher is a pleasure to be appreciated.”

Irwan Sofwan 2
Irwan Sofwan

Doni Maulistya

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A Moment After Birth (2015); Installation, object, and sound

Doni Maulistya (b. 1987 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia) is an artist with an educational background in photography. He studied documentary photography through workshops such as Angkor Photography Workshop in Siem Reap, Cambodia (2009) and Foundry Photo Workshop in Istanbul, Turkey (2010). He’s also made works using installation and film.

As I live my life as an artist, I started to question my position in a society that is continuously in a dynamic negotiation between ‘the old’ and ‘the new’. I see the negotiation as an identity formation process that will always happen in human history. Thus, in making artworks, I am always interested in exploring the themes of history, tradition, and other dialectic dimensions that happens within society, an intermingling of culture.

Through my artistic research, I realize that no one medium should be considered a sole artistic language that can convey messages. Therefore, I expand my exploration on photography as well as on other media beyond photography.

Within the past four years, my artistic exploration has mostly been of the elements of performing and motion. My interests in that exploration started when I worked on performing art projects with Papermoon Puppet Theatre and Migrating Troop Theatre. Those events have enriched my experience to develop my body of work. One of the biggest challenges I have gone through is how to make objects that can cover all the different elements in performing art, such as movement, sound, interactivity, storytelling, etc. Afterwards, I decided to explore kinetic, video, sound, installation, and any other medium that I can learn about and apply to my artistic works. Besides learning the intermingled elements of any medium I use, I also always aim to learn how to discuss the local aspects in global context.

During the residency at Rimbun Dahan I hope to work on developing my current project called Still Praying. This project is about exploring the ‘Believing Practice’ that happens in contemporary society. But still, I always keep a vacant room on every project to allow new ideas to further develop.

To find out more about Doni and his work, you can find him on Instagram, Facebook, Issuu, Youtube, or check out his website. He will be in residency in Rimbun Dahan until the end of July 2016.

Thynn Lei Nwe

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Thynn Lei Nwe

Thynn Lei Nwe (b. 1991) is an artist based in Yangon, Myanmar. She studied for a Diploma in Fine Arts specialized in Painting at the Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore from 2012 to 2014. She usually works with different mediums including oil paintings and ceramics. Her recent works deal with the concept of creating an environment that do not exist in real life and existing in a part of her own imaginary world.

Artist Statement

I have been asked over and over why I paint hybrids. And to every questioner, I asked, “Have you ever gotten tired of looking at the same person in the mirror every morning? Or have you felt tired when you see other people too?” Because this has happened to me a lot for years and my recent series shows the progression of this feeling, and it’s a part of the solution for myself.

I started from pretending the people, family, friends, neighbours and those random strangers I pass by on the street are ‘hybrids’ in the way I want to see them. I use painting as a medium to create an imaginary world where the people I know, including me, change every day, may be a plant today and a bird the next day. My imaginary people make me want to deal with ‘real’ people again. And it’s fun to see new people living around me every day. For me at the moment, nothing is more joyful than to create something that will never exist in the real life and to live among them.

Sharon Chin

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Sharon Chin

Sharon Chin (b.1980, Petaling Jaya) is an artist and writer living in Port Dickson, a seaside town two hours drive from Kuala Lumpur.

She makes all kinds of things in all kinds of places, from galleries to city sidewalks. She’s hung sails across an embassy lobby, listened to strangers’ hearts on the streets of Sydney, and gotten teargassed while wearing a costume of yellow flowers. Recently, she bathed in public with a hundred people for “Mandi Bunga/Flower Bath”, a project at Singapore Biennale 2013, and painted weeds on political party flags for the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Queensland, Australia.

During her three month 2016 residency at Hotel Penaga, Sharon will be working on a series of linocut illustrations for writer Zedeck Siew’s short story collection about fantastic animals and plants, tentatively titled ‘Local Flora, Local Fauna.’ An exhibition of the prints will be held from 23 July – 7 August 2016 at Run Amok, which is located at Hin Bus Depot Art Centre on Jalan Gurdwara in Georgetown.

For more of Sharon and her work, you can visit her website.

Photo Credit to Azrul K Abdullah for Esquire Malaysia