Resident Artist

Bruce Pashak and Janet Langdon

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Where Are You From, 3D lenticular, Bruce Pashak

Bruce Pashak is a multidisciplinary unrealist artist who uses imagery, text and technology to create abstracted anti-narratives that both affirm culturally-encoded associations and break free of these limitations. The images become an experience, a slippery personal tour through existentialism where the meaningful is unhinged and the meaningless finds its private value. He creates art forms as playgrounds for the imagination. Pashak calls them, “riddles that you might try to puzzle out but never need to solve”.

A masters graduate of the University of Calgary, Bruce Pashak continues his theoretical inquiries into the construction and dissemination of perception with a studio practice that includes combinations of painting, drawing, sculpture, mixed media and 3D lenticular technology. Pashak has had over 40 group and solo shows throughout Canada, the USA and Europe, including the Toronto Art Fair and most recently the Miami Art Fair, Dec 2015 with Back Gallery Project. He has an upcoming solo show in Nov, 2016 at Back Gallery Project in Vancouver, BC. Pashak was a professor in the Faculties of Fine Arts at three Canadian universities for a culmination of 16 years. His works are in private and corporate collections, including the University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, Nickle Arts Museum, Vancouver General Hospital and the Art Hotel in Calgary. He is represented by Back Gallery Project in Vancouver, BC, Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary, AB, and Buckland Merrifield Gallery in Saint John, NB.

Pashak has recently formed the creative collaboration “PLACE” (Pashak Langdon Affirmative Common Experience) with textile artist Janet Langdon. Langdon studied serigraphy at Langara College and textile design at Capilano College and ran her own furniture upholstery business in Vancouver for 10 years. Her textile background brings the element of pattern design into the art works, aligning itself with the philosophy of the neopatternist theory of connections.

Bruce and Janet will be in residency at Rimbun Dahan from February to end of March 2016. For more information on Bruce’s work, you can visit his website.

Arko Datto

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Arko Datto

Arko Datto was in residency at Hotel Penaga from February to April 2016.

My aim with photography is two-fold. I want to push the boundaries of photography, question what it means to be a photographer in the digital age while simultaneously playing the role of observer and commentator on critical contemporary social issues. I was on my way to a doctorate in the theoretical sciences before I decided to change course and explore the burgeoning field of contemporary photography.

I have been promenading across the globe for the past few years and am presently awaiting the next adventure the four winds will carry me to. Apart from working on my own photography related projects, I enjoy playing curator too and have been associated with the Kochi Biennale and OBSCURA Festival of Photography in this role.

Exhibitions & Projections:

  • Gangetic Interludes screened at VOIES OFF, Arles. 2015.
  • CROSSINGS shown at Angkor Photo Festival. 2014.
  • CROSSINGS exhibited at Mindpirates Vereinsheim, Berlin. 2014.
  • CROSSINGS exhibited at OBSCURA Festival of Photography, Malaysia.2014.
  • Paris: La Vie des Autres shown at the Angkor Photo Festival, 2013.
  • The River shown at the Delhi Photo Festival, 2013.
  • CYBERSEX and The River shown at OBSCURA, Malaysia. 2013.
  • Solo exhibition Realms Nocturna at the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Kolkata. 2012.

Ineza Roussille

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Ineza Roussille

Ineza Roussille

Ineza Roussille is an independent documentary filmmaker from Malaysia. She’s produced videos for local NGOs on various social issues. These include videos for Yayasan Chow Kit on street children, for the Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG), a coalition of local feminist civil society organisations, on the importance of women’s participation in the elections (Undi Anda, Suara Anda), a series for PT Foundation on People Living with HIV (PLHIV), and for UNICEF on children’s rights in Malaysia. Currently Ineza is working on an ongoing campaign called I Am You: Be A Trans Ally, which aims to raise awareness on the issues of the Transgender community in Malaysia, and complement the efforts regarding the recent judicial challenge against laws that infringed on the rights of the Trans* community.

Other than her documentary work, she has also worked on several creative side projects, including a short film entitled Blackbird, and a mockumentary on lesbians in KL entitled, Angmo & Amoi. Angmo & Amoi has been screened at various queer film festivals including in Manila, Philippines, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Austin, Texas in the USA. She recently won first prize for the PLHIV series at the Red Ribbon Short Film competition, organized by the Malaysian AIDS Council.

She’ll be in residency at Rimbun Dahan for January 2016 to work on a memoir project to explore the story of her father’s life, which may be turned into a graphic novel further down the line.

“As fulfilling as my journey into video activism has been, I feel like I need to step away from the camera and focus more on my writing. My father passed away in March this year, and while clearing out his apartment, I realized I was surrounded by his life story. From the primary school report cards that he kept, to the disgustingly smoke stained walls of his apartment, the visuals in that space painted a picture of him I knew so well, and yet did not understand at all. I realized I needed to write his story, from the perspective of the only person who had the experience of being his child. In writing his story, I hope to allow myself the space to personally grieve his loss, and at the same time produce a story that would make him proud.”

 

Priceless: Featuring works by 2015 resident artist Al-Khuzairie Ali

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Priceless: Featuring works by 2015 resident artist Al-Khuzairie Ali

PRICELESS Web header

Rimbun Dahan presents Priceless, showcasing works made by ceramic artist Al-khuzairie Ali during his six-month residency from July to December 2015, where he explored the concept of human connection to the external world (an ongoing focus in his work) through the subject of animals. The external world overflows in Rimbun Dahan, a green lung home to a variety of wildlife, tucked away from the bustle of the city. Within the grounds humans, animals and plants alike live under a canopy of branches, leaves and steel beams, providing fruitful intersections of the organic and the constructed. This setting provided the perfect incubator for the artist and his explorations.

Khuzairie hails from Pahang, home of the largest portion of Taman Negara, one of the oldest rainforests in the world. This sense of place informs his connection and exploration of the natural world time and again – from his studio in Puncak Alam he began to think of what used to be lush, thick jungle disappearing under development and construction, habitat disappearing under greed. “I look at the hideous side of the human character which has an impact on other beings in the ecosystem,” says Khuzairie of his inspiration. “We know that some animals are threatened with extinction but the modern world focuses on the importance of money and this has many people losing their judgment and ignoring the nature of life.”

We invite you to visit the exhibition and experience Al-Khuzairie’s work as well as the surroundings that made the work possible.

OPENING HOURS:

Weekends 10am – 6pm, Monday to Friday by appointment
16 – 24 January 2016

Admission is FREE.

Rimbun Dahan is also hosting our annual dance event, Dancing in Place, a series of site-specific contemporary dance performances by dancers from all over Asia, on 16 and 17 January.

There will be a guided tour of Rimbun Dahan’s grounds and traditional village houses at 9am on Sunday 24 January, conducted by Angela Hijjas. For the event page on Facebook please click here.

Chan Aye & Phyu Mon

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Chan Aye & Phyu Mon

Chan Aye (b. 1954) is a sculptor, installation artist, painter, and writer from Myanmar. He was self taught before going on to study traditional Myanmar painting between 1986 and 1989. He has developed a unique pictorial language that is inventive and at the same time inherits the iconography of Myanmar cave painting and mural paintings, as found in the temples at Bagan, Sitkaing, and Po Win Taung in North Myanmar, as well as his studied interest in Western art, which the artist has studied in magazine and book reproductions through the years. His art is rooted in physicalizing the various states of life’s existence and spirituality, and engages with the dualities of material and immaterial forms: color, time, and the dimensions of human emotions, of anger, love, hate, and greed, with diverse materials such as paint, wood, marble, glass, sandstone, and paper from Myanmar Shan State, silk, motor equipment, lighting, bronze, and steel. Searching for new ways to merge traditions with the contemporary condition, he continues to create art through periods of political turmoil and change, and in the aftermath of the devastating Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Chan Aye has exhibited in Singapore, Germany, Finland, France, Hong Kong, India, Thailand, China, New York, and London.

Phyu Mon (b. 1960), writer, photographer, performance artist, and painter, grew up in an environment distinguished by strong tradition and rich culture. Since her teens she has written poetry, short stories and also painted. Now, her recent work is writing articles about art in Myanmar Magazine and Journal, as well as other international publications. Her work expanded beyond writing when she was introduced to video and film production through a program at the University of Finland, and also when she accepted a Diploma of Photography from Myanmar Photography Association. She is one of the very few women artists in Myanmar who currently works with digital photography and visual art. She is also the first female performance artist in Myanmar and has participated in several local and international exhibitions and festivals. She currently runs the Blue Wind Art project in Myanmar.

In her art, she presents the contentment and peace even of a hard life, the need for progress but at the same time the need to care for the environment. She is at present witnessing the cultural changes taking place in the urban areas through globalisation but she feels confident that the rural people, the true representatives of Myanmar, will not be overly swayed by western culture. Having struggled to break out of a restrictive and traditionalistic society, she knows how strong the culture’s values are. Her hope, presumed in her art, is that the best of these values will be kept intact for the sake of future generations. Phyu Mon has exhibited her works in Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Cambodia, Singapore, Korea, Denmark, Spain, UK, France and the US.

Chan Aye and Phyu Mon will be undergoing a two month residency at Rimbun Dahan. For more information on their work, visit Chan Aye’s website, and Blue Wind Art’s website.

 

 

 

Kafayat Quadri

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Kafayat Quadri

Kafayat Quadri is a poet (poetographer), singer-songwriter, music producer and a certified attorney. She was the first African to speak and perform at the TEDxKLwomen, Malaysia in 2013. Her music and poetry have been performed on the stages of George Town Literary Festival, KAKISENI International Arts Festival, Generation-Y Music Festival, Lake Garden Music Festival, Coffee & Fringe Art Festival, and so on.

Her first album ‘KQ the EP’ which she co-produced with Aman Junaid, a Grammy Award Recipient and her second album ‘April 16′, instrumentals in honour of her mother can both be found on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music & VEVO. Her prose poem was recently shortlisted by the PWDC Writers Workshop by Bernice Chauly for the End Violence Against Women Campaign & GTLF 2015. She is a recipient of the Hotel Penaga Artist Residency 2016 and her first poetry collection is due to be published by Garden Bench in the same year.

In anticipation of her first collection of poems, Kafayat is working on interpreting some of the poems from the upcoming poetry collection, Aquarius, alongside her photography as printed on canvas, which would be exhibited at the Penaga Hotel at the end of her residency. The photography exhibition would be from the 30th January until the 29th of February 2016.

Also, during her residency, she would commence work on the composition of the music to be featured in her 3rd album in collaboration some Malaysian rappers and poets (especially the Penang-based ones) for her newly found music & poetry genre – RAPCOUSTICS, which comprises mainly of a single musical instrument accompanied to a rap or poetry rendition with musical choruses at intervals which would come from a direct and on-spot musical interpretation of the poem or rap as rendered by the featured artist.

She is the founder and the Managing Editor of the Poetry Digest Magazine in Nigeria and hopes to get the world reading, writing and sharing poetry everyday.

Azliza Ayob

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Azliza Ayob

Azliza Ayob (b. 1975) is an artist who works in many mediums, such as painting, collage, and installation. Her most recent solo show was in 2014, titled All That Glitters, at Wei-Ling Contemporary in KL. She’s been working as an artist, facilitator, and educator for 15 years now (and counting), exhibiting both locally and internationally in Japan, Australia, Sweden, Madrid, and Barcelona. Azliza has also been part of Rimbun Dahan’s collaborative exhibitions with WWF, Art For Nature, multiple times in past years. Nature plays a strong part in her work and her inspirations, as seen in her initial statement of intent below:

I am preparing for the first of my autobiographical paintings in one show. I had started my ‘Adventures of Azliza Ayob’ series in 2009, while building Art History (Eastern Art) modules in a local university. While developing my research on manuscript and miniature paintings from great masters, I discovered that the missing link is to incorporate local elements which I believe can be solved if I photograph, sketch, interview and paint local plants and anything related on the function, purpose and local stories (medicinal). I want to change the function of plants from my previous paintings into a selection of the right flower/plant for the right meaning. Rimbun Dahan’s landscape is perfect for anything creative, it’s fresh, private and acts as a data bank for many leaves, plants and flowers.

Kanakan Balintagos

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Kanakan Balintagos

Kanakan Balintagos (meaning ‘hunter of truth’), formerly known as Auraeus Solito, is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning Palawán-Filipino filmmaker and playwright. He comes from a lineage of Shaman-Kings from the Palawán tribe of South Palawan. He grew up in the city of Manila and after graduating from the Philippine Science High school studied Theatre at the University of the Philippines, where he received a degree in Theater Arts. One of the leading independent filmmakers in the Philippines, he was recently chosen in Take 100, The Future of Film which presents an emerging generation of the most talented filmmakers around the world. This book, published by Phaidon Press, New York, is a survey featuring 100 exceptional emerging film directors from around the world who have been selected by 10 internationally prominent film festival directors.

His first feature film Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) won 15 international awards including 3 awards at the Berlinale (The Teddy award, International Jury Prize at the Kinderfest and Special Mention from the Children’s Jury of the Kinderfest). It is also the first Philippine film nominated for Best Foreign film at the Independents’ Spirit Awards in the US and has been shown in more than 50 film festivals around the world.

Tuli (Circumcision), his second feature film won Best Picture and Best Director at the Digital Competition at the 2005 CineManila Film Festival; won the NETPAC Jury Prize at the Berlinale, International Forum for New Cinema and the Best International feature Film at Outfest in Los Angeles. Solito is the first Filipino to make it to the premiere independent film festival in the world, the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, USA, two years in a row (with The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros and Tuli). His films have been screened in major festivals around the world including Berlin, Sundance, Montreal, Pusan, Toronto and Rotterdam.

Solito completed a screenplay development program at the Binger Film Lab in Amsterdam.

His film Busong (Palawan Fate) was selected at the prestigious Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2011, and it was awarded Best Director, Best Sound Design, and Best Original Music Score at Cinemalaya 2011. His film Busong was also shown at the 2012 National Geographic All Roads Film Festival in Washington, D.C.,where it was awarded Grand Prize, the Merata Mita “Best of Stories” Award.

In 2013 he adopted his tribal-spirit name Kanakan Balintagos after his uncle, who is a shaman in Palawan, dreamt about him. He said in an interview, “In his dream, he saw me in the middle of a sandbar holding a camera that turned into a blowgun. I became a kanakan … a hunter. Suddenly, great waves appeared from both sides of the sandbar, but I remained unharmed, untouched.”

In 2014 his film Esprit de Corps, based on the play he wrote when he was seventeen, won three awards at the Cinema One Originals Film Festival, including Best Director.

In 2015 he was awarded 1st Prize in the prestigious Palanca Awards, Filipino Division, Dulang Ganap Ang Haba (Full Length Play in Filipino), for his literary work “Mga Buhay na Apoy” and in 2016 won the Gawad Buhay ( Philippines’ Stage Awards) for Best Original Script for the same play.

For more information on Kanakan and his work, visit his website.

 

Golda Mowe

Angela Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , ,
Golda Mowe

Golda Mowe is a fiction writer from Sarawak, author of Iban Dream, a book about Bujang, a young boy orphaned in the rainforest and brought up by a family of orangutans, but whose adult future has already been decided for him by Sengalang Burong, the Iban warpath god. On reaching adulthood, Bujang must leave his ape family and serve the warpath god as a warrior and a headhunter. The follow up to Iban Dream is titled Iban Journey.

I have loved folklore, myths and spooky stories since I was a child growing up in Sarawak and, the funny thing is, instead of dampening my interest, the more I immersed myself into the ‘practical’ world, the more stories I began to think up. In addition to that, living on Borneo allows me to explore the beliefs and superstitions of multiple cultures, because apart from our own Asian ones we are also exposed to western beliefs from our colonial heritage.

— Golda Mowe

Golda is now working on the manuscript for her third book, set in the ancient trading port of Santubong in the 7th Century, during the rise of Srivijaya in Sumatra and before the fall of Tarumanagara in Jawa. She is hoping the lush surroundings in Rimbun Dahan will give her the distraction free environment she needs to write the story to completion. To find out more about her work, please visit her website.

Golda Mowe Photo
Caption from author’s website: The tall four-post baskets are called lanji and are used for carrying the rice harvest back to the longhouse. The smaller basketsare sintong and are used to collect rice panicles during harvesting. These baskets are heirlooms from the family of Penghulu James Semilan anak Gaong, Bawang Assan.

Martha Soemantri

Angela Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , ,
Martha Soemantri

Martha Soemantri (b.1984, Berlin) is a trained art & cultural manager, researcher and writer. She has worked in managerial & curatorial capacity in art & cultural projects for years with invested interest in mutual heritage, material objects (cultural artefacts, textiles in particular), women artists and art & cultural education for young audiences. Her past projects span several cities such as Singapore, Shanghai, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bali, Bandung, Utrecht, and Arnhem.

Her focus of research at Rimbun Dahan during her one month residency is on women artists’ practices in the Southeast Asian Region. Her journal and writings can be found on her blog.

Martha Soemantri