A formidable line-up of artists in Suarasa III promises a captivating showcase of contemporary art, writes Sarah NH Vogeler
IN The Shock Of The New (a 1980 documentary television series), art critic Robert Hughes said: “The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It’s not something that committees can do. It’s not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It’s done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world.”
Such powerful words. Art should be both splendid and sporadically ‘mean’, and to get from sensation to significance, it has to be missioned by persons, arbitrating between a sense of the past and an instinctive understanding of our surroundings.
Perhaps, it was this objective which inspired Suarasa, brought to life with the intention of conveying together a miscellany of works by artists of several generations taught and educated at UiTM, to express and articulate the university’s major role in impelling the general movement and paths of contemporary art in the country.
Since its inception in 1967, UiTM has evolved considerably and has given birth to many of our now prominent image makers. In over 40 years, the establishment has whipped into existence, influential academics and speakers, all of whom have positively impacted the progression of the arts here.
Suarasa debuted in 2012 and featured 14 stalwarts including Datuk Sharifah Fatimah Syed Zubir Barakbah, Tajuddin Ismail, Awang Damit Ahmad, Ahmad Zakii Anwar, Ramlan Abdullah, Jalaini Abu Hassan and Bayu Utomo Radjikin. Of indomitable works were Sharifah Fatimah’s riotous, mind-twisting Celebration II and the penetrating hues of Tajuddin Ismail’s Rentak Alam - Arus. Then there was the abstract expressionist Awang Damit’s Jejak Waktu, Bilah-Bilah Yang Patah, of a past afflicted. A perennial favourite, Ahmad Zakii Anwar offered his distinctly pallid Agenda Larut Malam which left both mind and body amok with a shameless hankering for something illicit.
And what of sculptor Ramlan Abdullah’s (currently one of the joint heads of UiTM’s Masters in Fine Arts along with Jalaini Abu Hassan) aluminum brew Mystery Continues? An inebriating experience! Jalaini Abu Hassan’s fabulously — saturnine Celebrating Abraham, a barely-concealed reference to religious and cultural clashes was just riveting, while Menjalar, Bayu Utomo Radjikin’s charcoal and acrylic He-Man under a blood red moon with traceries hinted at some sort of an obscure and uncompleted portrait. It was either of a Man waiting to happen, or too much had already happened.
UNVEILING SUARASA
Suarasa is a merger of two Malay words, sua (to meet) and rasa (to feel). Rasa, from Sanskrit, meaning “essence”, represents a crucial spiritual state and is the passionate leitmotif of an objet d’art or the prime sensation that is induced in the individual who sees, reads and perceives such a composition.
SUARASA II
The unveiling of Suarasa II was no less absorbing. The reunion, of a celebratory nature of course, also subtly intimates at deeper things. Within this group, each one was a story teller, sharing his tales through vignettes. 25 UiTM alumni comrades took part in Suarasa II and all the works nominated revealed cruxes of diversity, power, fragility, elegance, torridness and the inexplicable.
One highlight was Suzlee Ibrahim’s highly-dramatised Flower. Its curious marriage of polyurethane oil and wood varnish was, well, curious, in the I-just-had-a-Dante ‘esque -nightmare-of-epic-magnitudes sense.
Ensnared in his strange puree was a lonely rubicund entity and juxtaposed against a background dark and cavernous, suggested nothing short of malevolence. The end of times as we know it possibly, a kind of bloodletting.
We never get enough sculpture workings exhibited here (one of the most recent, Zheng Yuande’s Stillness Consumed, of intimate and carnal steel and bronze sculptures left many woozy), and first cousin, installation works for that matter, which made Hilal Mazlan’s self-mocking Self-Portrait As An Artist a welcomed addition to Suarasa II. The artist’s steel, wood and LED mechanism is inscrutable, yet invited us to probe and explore. Though the artist’s mind was one filled with many paradoxes, it was also jam-packed with much nothingness. Worthy of mention were Abdul Mansoor Ibrahim’s end grain wood engraving, Belalang Kunyit with its beautiful insect, its pinchers, mandibles, femurs, ovipositors, wings stunningly given life, and Rafiee Ghani’s exquisitely-mutinous Teluk Panglima.
SUARASA III
Suarasa III now beckons, featuring yet another formidable group of UiTM past graduates — 27 artists showcasing 27 diverse works, a few returning from Suarasa II. Fadilah Karim is one — the intensifying star whose works of shiny-not-so-happy-people makes a return after her incredible two-women show Msyt{EO}ry in May-June this year.
There’s also Aznan Omar’s aluminium plate Cyberlife Of Obsession on communication breakdowns/ meltdowns, Tengku Sabri’s 3D Portrait/ Torso Yang Agong, (The Great) a fictitious warrior with both brain and brawn, Yusri Sulaiman’s cogitations on his life’s journey in Archapology, Daud Rahim’s studies on spiritual that fulfillment versus lurid excesses, Khairudin Zainudin’s whimsical documentation of the traumas of everyday life, and Mastura Abdul Rahman’s “controlled” fairytales that come to life under a Moon luminesce and much more drama — of the primal, of fantasies, of politics of the human condition.
Suarasa III
When: Until Nov 14, 10am - 7pm daily (including weekends and public holiday)
Where: Segaris Art Centre, Lot No. 8, Level G4, Publika Shopping Gallery,
Solaris Dutamas, 1 Jalan Dutamas 1, KL
Contact: 03-6211 9440
