Angela Hijjas was invited to give the opening speech at an exhibition of works by Jeganathan Ramachandram at Sutra Gallery, from 7 to 31 May 2004.
Opening Speech by Angela Hijjas
Ramli Ibrahim, Jeganathan Ramachandram and friends.
I was delighted to be asked by Ramli to officiate here this evening, as it provides me with an opportunity not just to appreciate the work of the artist, but to acknowledge Ramli’s massive contribution to our creative world. He is well known and loved for his dance, but he has also made enormous differences to the whole realm of artistic creativity in Malaysia. Music, dance, visual art and the capacity to think and discuss how we shape our lives, are the important things, and Ramli has opened the eyes of many of us to these riches. A Sutra event always has a multi faceted complexity that demonstrates how we should respond to life’s challenges in artistic and original ways. I thank Ramli for leading the way so courageously as he focuses his and our attention on the truly important things in life, not only by his teaching, but with the many exhibitions that he holds here every year. He makes his home and studio available for everyone to enjoy, and to participate in his many passions with incredible generosity.
I must also congratulate Jeganathan Ramachandram for this beautiful series of paintings. I had the opportunity yesterday to meet him, see the show and discuss the ways he develops his work and what it means to him. His art practice is strongly lead by his philosophy of life, his studies in India and his life experience in both India and Malaysia.
His development of traditional Hindu geomancy into an artistic expression is a major achievement, aesthetically and technically. The forms, compositions, colour and symbols are all drawn from his knowledge of a traditional understanding that defies scientific western explanation. By presenting it as an aesthetic experience informed by traditional science, his work becomes an accessible contemplative guide towards spiritualism. For his subject matter, he takes each of the times of day and explores its character in the natural, the human and the spiritual worlds, synthesizing a unique expression of how he sees everything: as a complex and dynamic interface between the physical and the spiritual.
As contemporary art, I find it refreshing to see work driven by an aesthetic that is traditional in many ways, and yet Jega selects ideas from contemporary abstraction and uses them as effective tools to express the things that really matter in his life. It seems that so much art today is driven by fashion, the random scribble is currently very popular, rather than by a search for a deeper understanding of how to express yourself as an artist without resorting to trendy solutions.
Originally Ramli invited me to open this show because of my involvement in both the arts and the environment, interests that I share with Jeganathan. Indeed the environment is a rich lodestone for creativity, and the environment too benefits from creative people. I am not creative, apart from planting a garden, and I have been searching for ways to balance the environmental destruction around me with something positive. I am now convinced that supporting and encouraging creativity in people is one constructive step that I can take.
However, I fear that the battle to save our forests and seas is entering its final stages. We may save some, but much will be lost in the next few decades, and as I become increasingly desperate, Jega, on the other hand, is more philosophical and sees it as part of the cycle of rise and fall, life and death. I know he is right, but we don’t all think on this cosmic level, as we rush around trying to reverse what will surely happen, sooner or later.
But if more of us were to contemplate on the issues and paint such evocative works of a perfect world, like these that we see here this evening, then we may have an answer to our environmental problems. The long term protection of our habitat will depend on us developing different values for the environment. A short term monetary value does not tell us the real value of a forest, for example. The trees felled are worth money to the logger and to industry, but what of its value to our water supply and our sense of place and who we are after the trees have gone? We will then need dams to store water, filtration and treatment plants to make it drinkable, and artificial places to restore our sense of who we are, all of which was previously done completely free of charge by forests.
If we develop different value systems for the environment, then we need different values in our lives as well. Money does not deliver the richness of life and experience that people like Jeganathan and Ramli have, and if we all were to share their values I know there would be fewer environmental problems in the world today.
I was delighted yesterday to hear that the artist is approaching the point where he can consider leaving his night job with the Malay Mail and committing himself full time to his life of philosophy, poetry and painting. He didn’t train only as an artist, that was just one part of his entire development as a man living in complex world. Now that he has a mature sense of himself as a poet, geomancer and one gifted with profound spiritual insight, I’m sure he will continue to produce important art works that will resonate with us all.
His expression owes as much to his philosophy as to his artistic skill, and it is this holistic approach that will give us the insight we need into the problems of the world so that we can solve them.
Thanks again to Ramli and Sutra for this wonderful evening, and again I congratulate Jeganathan for leading us into his world with such beautiful works. Thank you.