Malaysia

CC Kua

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , , ,
CC Kua

CC Kua (b. 1991, Malaysia) is a Kuala Lumpur based artist who focuses on contemporary drawing or painting. Sometimes, she just walks around. Born in Sungai Petani, Kedah, CC obtained her BA (Hons) in Graphic Design and Illustration, The One Academy (degree conferred by the University of Hertfordshire). She then pursued her MFA from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts, Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan.

Through her works, she attempts to make people ‘see’; often like a peeping hole, the viewing experience can be quite exciting, intimate or nothing. Most of the time, she is inspired by daily life happenings including her dreams. She creates casual mise-en-scène by laying out characters, shapes, colors, lines… which is merely to please the eyes and sometimes herself ­– the story comes later, or no story at all. However, when she is very sure of a picture or concept, she transfers it from her mind to a surface precisely. CC Kua views society as a big loaf of bread, while the majority is heading towards totality or meta-narrative (the big bread), her passion as an artist is to pick up the bread crumbs (fragments or values that have been left behind). Of course, it is just a metaphor, she doesn’t eat the bread crumbs…

‘I wander, I wonder.
I observe, I execute.
Sometimes, I just observe and record.’

CC Kua will be our Southeast Asian Arts Residency artist for 3 months starting in January. To learn more about her works, visit her website and her Instagram. You can also read these articles written about her and her works :

 

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/culture/2019/06/14/artist-cc-kua-exhibition-painting-lostgens

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/people/2016/08/09/artists-work-to-sting-like-a-mosquito-bite

Deborah Augustin

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , ,
Deborah Augustin

Deborah Germaine Augustin is a writer trained in narrative fiction. During her MFA in creative writing, she discovered an affinity with the lyric essay and has been experimenting with the form ever since. She draws inspiration from Hilton Als, Leslie Jamison and Alexander Chee. Her work engages with migration, otherness, hybrid and postcolonial identity, the fantastic, and Southeast Asian myth.

In 2018, her lyric essay about immigration and racism in the United States was shortlisted for the Chautauqua Janus Prize and the Writers at Work competition in the nonfiction category. In 2019, she was admitted to the Orchids Without Attached Thighs writing workshop.

Since returning to Malaysia from the United States, she has taught creative writing and creative nonfiction at the university level. She has also taught and facilitated creative writing outside of academia.

During her 2-month residency, she will be working on creative nonfiction essays about family, truth, and monstrous femininity.

You can find out more about her works here or follow her on Twitter.

Afi Noor

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , , ,
Afi Noor

Afi Noor (b. 1990) is a poet based in Kuala Lumpur. She has read and performed in Singapore, London, and participated in 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe as part of KCL’s King’s Players. She ran Spill the Ink Poetry Lab, a monthly poetry workshop as part of SpeakCityAsia’s initiative, connecting established local and international writers with budding homegrown poets. Her poems are published in a chapbook called Ten Poems (2012) and featured in Kisah Journal by PUSAKA, Asian Centre Anthology of Malaysian Poetry in English, Rambutan Literary and When I Say Spoken, You Say Word Anthology.

Her current project, She Brings Monsoon aims to explore ways to capture the multifaceted essence of a Kelantanese Malay woman. By taking on the journey to dig through her own personal and shared narratives, rediscovering the vocabulary of the region, and grappling with the twists and turns between tradition and modernity, her poems took on the role to inform undocumented stories of hijabi and Kelantanese. These poems also try to investigate the possibilities – and limitations – constructed within the two languages: English and Kelantanese. These limitations will be further explored through body articulations as a performance poet. Her choice to don the hijab further enforces her artist statement – how much power does this cloth has, and can that power be depatriarchalized through unconventional states of the body?

Afi Noor is here for 2 weeks as a resident writer in our Southeast Asian Arts Residency program. She intends to use the time away from the city and familiar faces at Rimbun Dahan to write new writings related to her personal history. The natural surroundings and the visceral experience of staying in an actual kampung house may help her to be more aware of her senses and body as a Kelantanese Malay woman.

You may find more of her updates at her Instagram or the hashtag #afinoorwrites

 

Works: 

Sambal in Rambutan Literary (2017) https://www.rambutanliterary.com/issue-three-afi-noor—sambal.html

Mother Prepares the Ritual in Rambutan Literary (2017) https://www.rambutanliterary.com/issue-three-afi-noor—mother-prepares-the-ritual.html

 

 

 

Kim Ng

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , ,
Kim Ng

Kim Ng is an artist and art educator based in Kuala Lumpur.  He works with a variety of media and art forms such as mixed media painting, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, drawing, and installation work.  Kim Ng did his Diploma in Fine Art from Kuala Lumpur College of Art, and then pursued his Fine Art BA honours degree at London Guildhall University, London.  He further completed his MA in Design and Media Art from the University of Westminster and MA by Project from London Metropolitan University, both in London, UK.  He has exhibited locally and abroad and taking part in the International art workshop in Southeast Asia countries like Taiwan and Thailand, and also local artist’s residency. Kim Ng currently teaches Printmaking and Sculpture at Dasein Academy of Art, and he is also the Head of the Fine Art department.

Working as a multidisciplinary artist, Kim Ng explores his concern on memory, relocation and dislocation, social phenomenon and human conducts through various materials, methods and artistic style. Through collecting information and material from the place we live, Kim Ng works with the direct fact that happens around us through various resources to define who we are and projecting the issues and questions in the course of the visual language that associates with each individual’s experience. His practice reflects the subjective way of seeing and thinking in the process of art-making, building up a vocabulary of feelings through materials and its visual representation.  Kim Ng’s works never settled into one way making, the variation in materials, art forms and methods of making keeps him stimulated and engaged with his art-making.

Kim Ng is here on a 3-month residency under our Southeast Asian Arts Residencies program. You can find out more about his works at his Instagram.

Charis Loke

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , , ,
Charis Loke

Charis Loke (b.1991) is a Malaysian illustrator and educator from Penang that will be joining us for April and May. Drawing upon literature and visual culture, she makes pictures that evoke wonder and curiosity, depicting fictional worlds and current issues with a deft combination of traditional and digital media. She is interested in the relationships between word and image as well as how images communicate, enhance, and subvert narratives.

As an illustrator working in imaginative realism, I have long been aware of the lack of Southeast Asian representation in mainstream science fiction and fantasy, despite the richness of the region’s history and myth. And yet: given that so much imagery in SF&F is based on Western symbols and iconography, how can one make genre art without relying on those tropes? How might we use influences from other cultures in an engaged, respectful manner? How does one deal with the danger of falling into an Orientalist mode of seeing, of exoticising foreign, unfamiliar things?

Beginning from October 2018, Charis has grappled with those questions in the form of a project named Kejora: sketches, stories, and characters from where the stars meet the sea and wandering roots run deep. It is fantasy inspired by the confluence of cultures in contemporary Southeast Asia and informed by current issues. Exploring themes like the resonance and dissonance of characters with their communities and what it means to feel at home, Charis will continue to further develop some of those sketches and vignettes into fully realised paintings during her two-month stay here in Rimbun Dahan.

You can find more of her work on her website here.

 

Dipika Mukherjee

Bilqis Hijjas Arts, Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency, Workshops , , , ,
Dipika Mukherjee

Dipika Mukherjee (Malaysia) is an author and sociolinguist. Her work, focusing on the politics of modern Asian societies and diaspora, is internationally renown. In the past years, she has given a keynote at the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators Conference (Bali, 2017), juried at the Neustadt International Literary Festival (USA, 2018), spoken at the Hearth Festival (Wales, 2018) and the Singapore Writers Festival (Singapore, 2017); she has also given public talks at the University of Stockholm (Sweden, 2018) and the International Institute of Asian Studies (Netherlands, 2017).

I have a very personal stake in telling Malaysian stories, especially those that promote social justice. I believe that the growing intolerance of our world today (in Malaysia, India, and the US) requires voices to advocate for tolerance with stories that span our imperfect, violent world and not merely shine a light on a particular region or nation or race.

Ode to Broken Things, Dipika’s Man Asia Literary Prize-longlisted debut novel, is set against the religious and ethnic conflicts simmering in politics and explores notions of nationalism and citizenship in Malaysia.

During her residency here at Rimbun Dahan, Dipika will be conducting a workshop called A Picture; A Thousand Words. Reviewing ekphrasis (the art of writing about images), this workshop will look at how art has inspired writers in the past by focusing on writing inspired by paintings and imagery. Then participants will review a number of Malaysian visual art on display at the Rimbun Dahan gallery to write poems and short prose. All writing levels welcome.

 

Syarifah Nadhirah

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency, Uncategorized , ,
Syarifah Nadhirah

Syarifah Nadhirah (b.1993) is a Malaysian based artist, who is constantly unearthing means to present her work in ways that people can relate to. Her interest in Art has spurred since childhood and her background in Architecture only inspired her to delve even more into the comfort of painting and the quest to explore herself as a visual storyteller. Oftentimes she finds herself going against the grain whenever seduced by the world of practice as she was always tinkering with creative projects such as holding workshops at Urbanscapes 2017, Yayasan Sime Darby Arts Festival 2018 and Bank Negara’s Women in the Arts Bazaar while drafting floor plans. There is always a challenge to break free from the structural disposition and manufactured schemes that she was used to, hence dabbling with experimental ideations only made sense when she practiced Architecture, which also gave birth to her co-founded creative company called Paperweight Studio.

She mainly uses watercolor and ink in her creations, particularly influenced by elements of water and human relationship with nature. Though, in a residency setting at Rimbun Dahan, she looks forward to an extended time alone to immerse herself in focusing on exploring another old form of art which is lino cut printmaking, a manifestation of labour of love and executing a purposeful thought process rather than the final product. Having perpetually lured by the lush green surrounding her neighbourhood, it is not uncommon for her to reflect that in most of her work. But, the need to recount these green forests became more prevalent to her as the ever-changing urban planning takes over vast lands throughout the years. She is mostly, or rather entirely interested in the current ripples of the perilous state that the Orang Asli (Indigenous People) here in Malaysia has to adhere to, of whom are susceptible to deceit and neglect, even from those who run the country. She hopes to engage in a series of dialogues with them and form a reiteration of appreciation for their unwithered spirit and love for their land.

Syarifah Nadhirah will be with us as a Southeast Asian Arts Residency artist for three months starting from February 2019. You can check out her Instagram here and her Behance profile here.

Nadhir Nor

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , ,
Nadhir Nor

Nadhir Nor (b. 1994) is an illustrator based in Sungai Buloh, Selangor. Graduated from The One Academy, Sunway he aspires to dabble in as many media he can try on from a mural commission for Urbanscapes (2016), to designing journals and sketchbooks for Journalife (2017). He is also interested in all things otherworldly. Mythology, ancient cultures and its relationship with modern society are some of the major subjects explored in his works. He believes that there’s something about finding the otherworldly in the mundane and vice versa, and this makes a story worth told. He strives to share as much magical body of work as he can with the world.

Nadhir is our resident artist for August – September 2018. For his stay at Rimbun Dahan, he will be exploring ways to bridge his works back to traditional media. He wants to try to reconnect with the physicality and textures that traditional work has to offer while also exploring world-building fictional folklores in local cultures.

You can follow more of his work at his tumblr and facebook page.

 

Ruby Subramaniam

Bilqis Hijjas Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency, Uncategorized , ,
Ruby Subramaniam

Ruby Subramaniam (b. 1989) is a self-taught Malaysian visual artist.

In 2014, she quit her award-winning career in digital marketing to pursue her passion in arts.  Her experience in corporate communications now allows her to utilize digital marketing and social media as a tool to increase community engagement about art. She works actively with diverse communities to run art-related projects and events, including Art Battle Malaysia. This event gives the audience a chance to participate actively, allowing them to exercise their ability to discuss and appreciate art. With her own artworks, she draws inspiration from traditional Malaysian narratives and culture. She is fascinated by the romanticised idea of ephemeral art.

I believe art is a prayer and it has to dissolve. The sooner it decays, the faster it lifts your burden.”

Because of that, she is never loyal to any one medium, and instead, enjoys the creative process of experimenting with unusual and unexpected artistic formats.

For the past two years, Ruby has worked on huge contemporary kolams (traditional Indian coloured rice art on the floor) installation in public spaces for Publika and RapidKL. “As a traditional art form, how do we revive it using the same method that has been used for centuries? How do we bring it alive again?”

In 2017, using skin as her canvas, her project, This Body is Mine was inspired by the Hindu Goddesses to combat street-harassment and the general Malaysian society’s attempt stigmatise women and police their bodies. As a result of the work, the project was uploaded to social media platforms and consequently went viral and reached more than 2 million views across the world. This project was exhibited in several group shows locally, and internationally in “Be Bold for Change”, Adam&Eve DDB, London as well as a case study in ARTS and SOCIETY (IYGU) by Mémoire de l’Avenir, Paris. More recently, it was presented in UNESCO’s World Humanities Conference in Liege, Belgium in 2017.

During the month of March 2018, her new project, ANTIDOTE in Rimbun Dahan, she invited women to be active participants in her projects, by sharing their relationship with their bodies. Without imposing her ideas and concepts onto her “canvas”, for thirty days, Ruby listened to thirty intimate stories by thirty diverse women and interpreted them with body art.

Please check out her website, facebook and instagram to find out more about the artist.

 

 

Nicholas Choong

admin Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , ,
Nicholas Choong

A go-to conceptual artist for agencies and brands like MRT Gamuda, Uber Malaysia, Tiger Beer, restaurants as well as Accounting & PR Firms in Malaysia – Nicholas Choong is no stranger to the visual arts and design world.

He studied watercolors under a mentor at the age of 13 and when he was 16 he learnt Graphic Design and Photography working as a Production Assistant in the film industry.

By the time he was 19, Nicky (a moniker he goes by sometimes) was already working in the events, music & entertainment industry. The next 17 years of his life was spent working and raising a family before he began painting again in 2011. In 2014 he helped shape (and was the first artist in residence for) the sembilan Art Residency Programme in Seremban. During that time he also mentored under Wei Ling Gallery and has continued to exhibit his work in group and solo shows up till this day.

In 2015 he opened his own studio, Satu Arts and continued to perfect his craft. Nicky also dabbled in installations and collaborative mural projects. In 2016, he began his foray into video production and has since then worked as a director, Art Director and Creative Director in the media and corporate world. In his traditional paintings, Nicholas works in a series based format and is known for his strong ink and line work.

During my residency at Rimbun Dahan I’d like to explore the relationships between the environment (source materials) and mediums available to me (video, photography, paintings) and create a body of work that resonates on all levels to create a story.

Here you can find interviews he’s done/been a part of on BFM (with Jael Estrella and solo), The Star, and Chalk and Raddy. To find out more about Nick’s work, you can check his Website, Facebook, Youtube, or Instagram.