REVIEWS
Batik used to tell Malaysia's lost story of cash crops, tigers and plantations
by Rouwen Lin
Originally published in The Star newspaper, 23 Aug 2022
https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/culture/2022/08/27/batik-used-to-tell-malaysia039s-lost-story-of-cash-crops-tigers-and-plantations
In his latest solo exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, contemporary artist Chang Yoong Chia delves into the stories of a nation shaped by a past often forgotten and a tradition that transcends time.
In A Leaf Through History, which is showing at Cult Gallery in Bukit Tunku, he continues his exploration of the batik technique and its evolution, and reflects on the influence of cash crops on the country, its people and wildlife.
This body of work comprises mostly batik pieces, with a few pencil sketches and watercolour works.
Merging historical facts with imagination, Chang has put together a show that embraces the complexities that come with different perspectives and versions of Malaysian history.
The storyteller side of the artist makes a strong appearance in this exhibition as he peels layer after layer of the past.
Chang’s moving away from the popular flower motifs of local batik to the depiction of cash crops of our land (rubber, gambir, oil palm) is a deliberate one, as it is with his inclusion of the stories of the common man – from exhausted rubber tappers, the hungry, tapioca-eating days during WWII and the mighty beasts of the forests (tiger, orang utan) which are now endangered.
“Through these works, I wanted to explore some key events in the history of Malaysia and how these events affected our lives. I also wanted to shine a light on the people who laboured in these plantations, as well as the changes in the ecosystem and wildlife,” says Chang, 47, who uses personal narrative and memory as a subjective space to explore the imaginative possibilities of painting and object-making.
During his research on Malaysian batik, he often came across statements that plant motifs are most commonly used.
“So I decided to use the cash crops plants of Malaysia for my motifs, because plantations are found all over Malaysia but very seldom portrayed in batik,” he says.
Chang’s recent batik art installation at the Ilham Art Show 2022 (which runs at KL’s Ilham Gallery till October) is part of his A Leaf Through History batik series. Each of the 28 individual pieces that make up the whole, depicts a rubber tree which is also human.
Batik is a relatively new venture for him, one that he first thought about exploring when he saw Ilham Gallery’s group exhibition Love Me In My Batik in 2016, a multi-generational survey of batik artists.
“The show sparked memories of batik paintings I saw growing up that I have nearly forgotten, which led me to my journey of experimenting with batik. When the Ilham Art Show open call was announced (last year), I submitted my proposal for an installation that suggests the vastness of a rubber plantation.
"I thought it would be nice to exhibit at the same venue that inspired this series. Luckily, my proposal was accepted,” says Chang, who majored in painting, and has used that skill to full effect in this new exhibition.
National fabric
A Leaf Through History exhibit at Cult Gallery features two works – Family Tree (Study I) and Family Tree (Study II) – that are similar to the artworks on display at the Ilham Art Show.
Unsurprisingly, one of the themes explored in this exhibition is batik as a national identity.
In the course of Chang unpacking how Malaysian batik is synonymous with Malaysian cultural identity, he ended up with more questions than answers.
“What exactly is our cultural identity? Is it an idea that is reinforced by external forces or is it a feeling that comes from within? Is there a common ground between batik paintings that belong in the realm of fine art and the batik in the textile and fashion industry?
“How do different genders, age groups or ethnicities think and use batik in their lives? As more questions began to crop up, I thought, instead of trying to find answers, why not just make a series of batik works that prompts people to ask questions about our collective identity?” he says.
Contrary to popular belief that new ideas will lead us to “forget” about our tradition, he thinks that having a broader idea about the traditional will instead help reinforce our own dialogue with tradition and what it means to us.
“It also allows younger people who are interested to learn about traditional crafts to enter into the dialogue more on their own terms. Having said that, I deeply respect the batik master artisans and batik painters. It’s a complicated skill to master as it requires a lot of knowledge, experience and dedication,” he adds.
Away from Kuala Lumpur
Last year, Chang moved from Kuala Lumpur to small town Tangkak in Johor, in search of a simpler life and to focus on art making. His surroundings there directly influenced his new works.
“After my batik residency in Kelantan in 2020, I wanted to work on some ideas based on my experience there. But everything changed because of the pandemic. Because I was confined in Tangkak for about six months because of the lockdown, I started to really look around my immediate environment. There are a lot of plantations surrounding Tangkak, so the idea of using cash crops as batik motifs and subject matter came because I am living here,” he shares.
Still, there is still a bit of his residency in this exhibition, in the form of Kelapa Kepala I, which he made in Kota Baru after visiting the first landing site of the Japanese invasion at Pulau Pak Amat beach just after midnight on Dec 8, 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States.
There are many more eye-opening stories in A Leaf Through History, like in The Dyeing Era, which captures the dangers faced by those working in gambir plantations in the early 1800s.
“The workers worked under threat of tiger attacks. But now gambir, which was used for dyeing cloth and tanning leather, is no longer planted in Malaysia and the Malayan tiger is on the brink of extinction,” he says.
Another piece, Olfactory Memory is a rumination on how the stench of latex is such a prevalent and intense memory for those who have worked in a rubber plantation, something that escapes Chang as it is not something he has experienced.
“I am unable to imagine this olfactory memory, which makes me wonder what other hidden details are unattainable even if one is well-informed through reading archival material. This artwork is also a sarong, with a diagonal band that separates the top design from the bottom.
“You can wear it in different ways depending on whether you want the top or bottom portion to be visible. In this show, I also wanted to explore batik as clothing. The sarong was once an important clothing item which also functions as a screen to change clothes in, a picnic mat on the beach, or an extra blanket,” he says.
Olfactory Memory is one of four batik sarongs showcased in this exhibition.
Lastly, among the striking batik works are three small pieces where Chang delicately paints on rubber leaves with holes in them.
“While working with small and fragile organic materials, I need to tense my muscles and breathe carefully. That makes me more aware of my own body. I also like the idea that when it passes on to somebody else, the person has to take good care of it, protecting it.
“These three works are made towards the end of the series. Up until this point, I had been focused on images that tell the stories of plantation history.
"So I thought it would be a good idea to just let the shape of the leaves inspire me and hope by doing that, the series ends with an open-ended possibility,” he concludes.
A Leaf Through History is on at Cult Gallery, Bukit Tunku in Kuala Lumpur till Sept 6.
REVIEWS
A Leaf Through History by Chang Yoong Chia
Uncovering Malaysia’s complex past in CULT Gallery’s latest show
Originally published online by Common Affairs Aug 2022
https://www.commonaffairs.co/a-leaf-through-history-by-chang-yoong-chia/
Leading up to the 31st of August in Merdeka month, CULT Gallery presents an art show depicting Malaysia’s colourful history of “cash crop” plantations through fresh perspectives.
A Leaf Through History by Chang Yoong Chia presents a “message through medium”. Yoong Chia’s use of batik technique to narrate the layered history of Malaysia is laden with meaning. Instead of the common flora and fauna motifs found on Malaysian batik, Yoong Chia chooses to draw gambir, rubber and palm plantations, exhausted rubber tappers, hungry eaters of tapioca during the Japanese occupation, and the endangered original inhabitants of our forests – the orangutans and our very own Pak Belang, the feral tigers.
Eddin Khoo who wrote the essay for the show, noted: “It was the plantation that dragged this tropical landscape into the modern age, transforming the land from spring of harvest to source of capital, fittingly bequeathed the term ‘cash crop.’ The wave of immigration – often in conditions of debt slavery – which followed altered the racial and cultural demographic of the Malay Peninsula indelibly.” He quoted historian Lynn Hollen Lees, who simply stated “Rubber reconstructs Malaya” in her study of the plantation and its subjects, Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects.
The narratives on Yoong Chia’s batik recount the history of cash crop plantations in Malaysia and how “amongst the rows of plants are hidden joy, hunger, love, sex, envy, friendship and violence”. The artist deconstructs batik from being a fabric that is associated with being decorative to something entirely different through his art: “It is a glimpse into the landscape of profit, invasion, colonialism, exploitation and ecosystem, as well as migration, setting down roots and preserving traditions.” Batik has become a form of visual art storytelling that is compelling us to confront the medium as well as the story.
In this show, he has chosen to explore the medium of batik, which to him has a national identity from the time of independence. The artist by using batik as a medium but with new narratives, questions us with his works, “have the new narratives of Malaysia replaced the layers of our past?”
A Leaf Through History will launch on 6th August 2022 and is available for viewing at CULT Gallery from 6th August – 6th September 2022. Viewing will be by appointment only.
REVIEWS
Up Close: Chang Yoong Chia
Art Asia Pacific issue 131, Nov/Dec 2022
A Leaf Through History: Family Tree (2022) by Chang Yoong Chia comprises 28 batik paintings, mounted in four rows of seven. It seems to adapt the structural conventions of an altarpiece, showing “crucifixions” with a story of a Passion and transfiguration, but not of the Christ. Twenty-four of the panels depict human bodies emerging from tree trunks, arms growing into branches; the trees are rubber trees, and their sap is collected in cups by the male, female, androgyne, old, young bodies in different colored skins as they toil, su er, cling together, bear new life. Death appears in different cultural representations.
The Union Jack at the nexus, a loin- clothed figure obscured between its stripes, ties this narrative of naked suffering toa history of colonial extractionism and migrant labor (rubber was the primary cash crop for the empire in British Malaya). The bodies surrounding it form a “family tree” representing the communities that have grown out of this history and collective memories. On its left is a heavily pregnant woman-tree, her breasts in the shape of papayas; on its right a young man-tree cuts through a barbed wire fence with his tapping knife. In continuing life, in breaking down barriers, they describe acts of resistance to exploitation and suppression. Further to the right is the flag of the Japanese empire, its sun shining behind a decapitated man-tree. The image references the mass killings carried out by Japanese forces during their occupation of Malaya in the Pacific War.
These batiks have a graphic, narrative quality, and the awkward innocence of an inner child’s eye-view. As official history rubs against shared memory, and the visual language of the colonizing West is translated and transfigured through the local medium of batik, it is in turn brought into the intimate frame of personal storytelling. Something chafes, leaving a raw wound, difficult to look away from.
BEVERLY YONG
Installation view of CHANG YOONG CHIA’s A Leaf Through History: Family Tree, 2022, batik on cloth with wooden rod attached to rubber tapper’s knives, 440×540×90cm, at Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Teoh Ming Wah.