REVIEWS
MEAT ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK
48-hour FB Live-Stream
at KongsiKL, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2020 23-25 Oct
Malaysian artist reconstructs lost chopping block installation in KL art warehouse
by Rouwen Lin
Originally published in The Star Online. Tuesday, 03 Nov 2020
A close-up of Chang Yoong Chia's 'Meat on the Chopping Block' (watercolour, chopping block and hooks, 2015/reconstructed in 2020). Photo: KongsiKL
Chang Yoong Chia was packing his stuff into boxes and getting ready to leave Kuala Lumpur for greener pastures, when he stumbled upon an artwork he created in 2015.
Meat On The Chopping Board, comprising watercolour works on wooden chopping boards dangling on hooks, was a way for Chang to express how he felt trapped in the political and economic circumstances of those times.
“That time passed and the artwork was never shown in public and almost forgotten. Strangely, recovering this artwork now uncannily gives it new life and meaning. My wife and I were in the process of moving out of Kuala Lumpur to start a new life elsewhere when the conditional movement control order (CMCO) was enforced again. Like everyone else, our plans had to be delayed and we are stuck here again. But life goes on,” says Chang.
A reconstructed 2020 version of Meat On The Chopping Board, currently exhibiting at KongsiKL arts warehouse space, is available for viewing this month.
Chang likens the precarious way in which the installation is balanced, to the state of imbalance and anxiety he feels.
'The title of this artwork is a phrase which refers to being caught in a perilous situation where there is no escape unless the other party is merciful,' says Chang about 'Meat on the Chopping Block'. Photo: KongsiKL
“The title of this artwork is a phrase which refers to being caught in a perilous situation where there is no escape unless the other party is merciful,” he says.
In Meat On The Chopping Board, we see how Chang juxtaposes the “softness” of watercolour against the hard, unyielding surfaces of the chopping boards.
“It is an unforgiving surface where the physical body is being violently reduced. I also like the idea of the vanished medium of ‘water in ‘watercolour’. The 'water' makes its contribution and is then gone. What is left is the ‘colour’. Like art, so much of what happens is unseen,” he says.
As for the meat hooks, he expresses fascination with how people are seemingly not bothered by the “unappetising” sight of meat for sale displayed this way.
“For me, meat hooks also allude to physical harm and pain, which in turn allude to people being hung, alluding further to crucifixes. However the crucifixes that were once a display of violent punishment, now become a symbol of sacrifice and salvation. I like the idea of how displays can change its meaning with time and through repeated viewings. Something negative could be positive in the future and vice versa,” he elaborates.
Chang adds that the vast and empty interior of KongsiKL’s space where Meat On The Chopping Board is being displayed, serves to accentuate and elevate “the loneliness, the helplessness, the unseen virus, the politikuses and other vermin”.
“Just hang on!” he says.
After all, it isn’t like we have much choice.
Meat On The Chopping Board at KongsiKL is open by appointment only. Contact Jun Yi at 012-2316670.
REVIEW
Meat on the Chopping Block: Power, Violence and Moral Responsibility
Review by Lily Jamaludin
originally published on https://baskl.com.my/meat-on-the-chopping-block-power-violence-and-moral-responsibility/
7 April 2021
Tucked away inside the repurposed warehouse of KongsiKL hangs Chang Yoong Chia’s Meat on the Chopping Block. It’s an eerie sight: painted in watercolor, on a series of chopping boards hung together with meat hooks, is a man who is seemingly being crucified. The space is empty, and there is almost nothing else to detract the viewer from the scene —except directly below the man is a meat cleaver positioned neatly on top of another chopping block. As viewers move around the piece, Chang’s installation art becomes a tense reflection on power (and the lack of it), mercy and moral responsibility in a time of crisis.
“I unearthed an artwork made five years ago that expresses my feeling of being trapped in the uncertain political and economic situation at that time. That time passed [but still] reflects the state of imbalance and anxiety I feel,” writes Chang in his essay about the piece. Indeed, the hanging man mirrors many of the emotions that we may feel now in a precarious political situation, a pandemic with an indefinite ending, an increasingly polarised society and a declining economy.
Powerlessness to violence is the most immediate feeling in Meat on the Chopping Block. The lone watercolor man stares back at the viewer, his face haggard and sunken. He is emotionless despite the fact that his body has been dismembered, as if a piece of meat at a butchery, the hooks puncturing the parts of the blocks where lifelike skin and flesh has been painted on. His arms are splayed out, hooked at the wrists and his feet are crossed over the way chickens’ feet are found at the market.
Still, the man’s direct gaze confronts viewers. This gaze seems to question: who are you in this scene, in this precarious drama of the world? “Meat on the Chopping Block is a phrase which means ‘caught in a perilous situation where there is no escape unless the other party is merciful’,” writes Chang. Indeed, as viewers are forced to ask who they are: an active bystander? A passive observer? One of the crucified? Or perhaps one of those responsible?
With no boundaries set around the installation, the meat cleaver almost urges the audience to approach it. Its tidy and clean positioning makes the crucifixion scene slightly more unsettling. The closer the viewer gets to the meat cleaver, the closer they come to power and violence, and the more they must reckon with it. This is, in fact, part of the magic of Meat on the Chopping Block. Viewers are almost never separate from the installation. Their very position in the space forces them to be a part of the installation – whether in front of the man, behind him, below him, or slunk over to the side. Viewers are forced to take a position and reflect on power.
The hanging man of Meat on the Chopping Block leaves viewers with no answers about the future. However, like the crucifixion, the atrocity of violence also leaves room for a possible redemption, or salvation. As viewers leave the warehouse of KongsiKL, they may be tempted to ask: what does salvation look like after this political moment? And what would be my role in it?
“Meat on the Chopping Block” was staged at the KongsiKL warehouse artspace in October.
Photos courtesy of Lily Jamaludin
Lily Jamaludin is a writer with the CENDANA-ASWARA Arts Writing Mentorship Programme 2020-2021.
REVIEW
The Geography of Corporeality
by Clarissa Lim Kye Lee
originally published on https://baskl.com.my/the-geography-of-corporeality/
5 April 2021
A common sight in South-East Asia is a crowded pasar pagi or morning market. Shuffling bodies intersecting with sprays of blood, dead animal fluids and smells. The dull thwack of a cleaver harnessing metamorphosis power, transforming a then chicken to a now poultry. Chopping blocks line the horizontal make-shift surfaces that emerge before sunrise and dissipate post meridiem.
These chopping blocks are lined with flesh daily. A butcher would segment the meat by cuts and joints for the anthropocentric gaze of human consumption. Each cut, fitting perfectly for further dissection on a chopping block.
The crucifix form, hung away from the ground, lit. On the floor lies a cleaver wedged into a chopping block. Image by Author
Chang Yoong Chia’s installation piece titled “Meat on the Chopping Block”《肉在砧板》paints the human anatomical form. It was only later when I realised it was the corporeal representation, onto circular and rectangular wooden blocks, crucifix in form and ready for sacrifice. The idea was originally conceived five years ago, a process of zoomorphism on the human body. Deconstructing flesh like a butcher, Chang segments the limbs as if readily prepared for further consumption, awaiting news for the next set of controls. Now, the fragility of the human body looms as a pandemic washes over the world. Wooden chopping blocks hanging, helpless, vulnerable. The body is open for inscription, for the viewers to navigate the geography of the corporeal self.
This year the installation has been reconstructed, curated and Installed in KongsiKL by the collective MingChang, made up of Teoh Ming Wah and Chang. KongsiKL is old warehouse arts space located in Jalan Klang Lama in Kuala Lumpur. Run by a non-profit organisation, the team focuses on producing interdiscinplinary performances, exhibitions, competitions and workshops. For this exhibition,the venue also took up a producorial role and proposed a 48-hour live stream exhibition opening when further movement control orders were put in place.
MingChang allowed for a free space “open mic” session alongside the installation, where friends of KongsiKL and the curatorial collective came to perform. My eyes followed the characters occupying the mies-én-scene, creating instant environments, responsive and reactive. Bodies, distorted, mapping the expansive gudang. Some of these moments included:
A masked figure, holding onto a detached limb, echos the segmentation of the corporeal self. Image by Author.
A dancer gliding across my screen, striking poses. Another character cycling into the frame, a shadow of a bicycle following the rider, drifting in from stage right, to stage left. And back again. I barely looked at the hanging chopping boards.
A human figure walking up towards the camera, determined. Right hand holding a detached limb, a hand to be exact. The right hand holding an indistinguishable object, too thin and too dark to determine the form. A wavering spotlight revealing the stationary figure as a masked person. The figure remaining stationary for about 2 minutes, beckoning me to wait on. I clicked away.
Ciabatta baked by the co-founders of KongsiKL entering the frame. A square table with a few loaves stacked on top of each other with a hand drawn sign in chalk. “CIABATTA” was all I could make out from the pixelated live stream.
The responses ranged from haunting with moving, looming shadows on the back wall, to moments of looking through a peephole, peering into a film set ready for shooting, to a painterly still life scene. Watching the scene unfold, my focus immediately shifted to new additions creating a sense of playfulness, randomness and moments of intrigue.
Christmas lights. The words “I want to be a Good Man” inscribed, a chair, left empty. Image by Author.
Amongst the various lockdown strategies, KongsiKL took an alternative approach.
Chang said: “This exhibition is possible because all parties involved are very flexible and there is not much bureaucracy and a lot of artistic exploration and curiosity”.
The exhibition enabled a horizontal world where bodies mattered. The absence of a physical audience compounded with the prickling “gaze of an unseen audience online” created an experimental realm that sits in-between time and digital space. “The floor is free for self-expression”, said Chang, it is a space for all to perform and react. “Nothing was planned, it just happened.” In this realm, the performers were able to find a platform for release, away from the anxieties of the everyday. For a moment, the live stream collapsed the boundaries of the new normal imposed in the Klang Valley.
The figure disappears and is replaced by the human form, moving swiftly to light up the back wall. Image by Author
Close up of Chang Yoong Chia’s installation. Image by KongsiKL
Clarissa Lim Kye Lee is under the CENDANA-ASWARA Arts Writing Mentorship Programme 2020-2021
REVIEW
Meat on a Chopping Block: Tale of Uncertainty
by Danial Fuad
originally published on https://baskl.com.my/meat-on-a-chopping-block-a-tale-of-uncertainty-by-chang-yoong-chia/
15 Dec 2020
Adaptability has always been an important trait to ensure our survival as a species. This adaptability trait is also evident in art, such as when a painter adopts realism on canvas to emulate photography. Now, with a global pandemic on our hands, we again see adaptability with the emergence of online art exhibitions as a means of working within the restrictions and constraints of The New Normal.
Meat on a Chopping Block by Chang Yoong Chia shows me how the artist adapts to the changes in his surroundings. Inspired by the economic and political uncertainty of 2015, Chang completed the works but put them on the back-burner, never really finding the right time or place to showcase them. The works resurfaced recently when Chang and his wife were packing to move house. He realised they had reappeared at the perfect time, with the lingering uncertainty around the pandemic, the cluelessness of the MCO and our helplessness as we place our livelihoods in the hands of the government.
Although not as gruesome as Damien Hirst’s God Alone Knows (2007), there is a sense of macabre and a sombreness that radiates from a piece hanging proudly in the centre of the massive space that is KongsiKL, which was formerly a warehouse. The piece is a chopping block resembling a person being crucified, and the empty surrounding space enhances the sense of loneliness. Getting closer, I can see a human figure intricately painted with watercolour on the chopping block, evoking feelings of empathy. Painting on unconventional surfaces is not something new to Chang, as previously seen in some of his works. For Maiden of the Ba Tree (2007), he paints on a ceramic spoon, As the Crows Cry (2008) was painted on eggshells, and he even paints on dried leaves for Botany of Desire (2012).
The selection of medium is vital in conveying the strength of a message, and in Chang’s case, the soft watercolour juxtaposed with a hard chopping block strengthens the piece as the contrast between each medium depicts a feeling of struggle.
Being a highly mobile artist moving around from residency to residency, the pandemic has particularly affected Chang’s mobility and he conveys this sense of helplessness and uncertainty through the figure stuck on a meat hook surrounded by vast emptiness. It seemed like helpless livestock awaiting its fate on the chopping block.
What makes the piece even more interesting is that KongsiKL live-streamed the work for 48 hours. Online viewing is the new norm these days and the feeling of uncertainty and mystery is further extended in the live stream. Will anything interesting happen or will nothing happen? That was the question on my mind during the live stream and it somehow relates to the uncertainty of these pandemic times. And indeed, something interesting did happen! At one point, a few people played music and danced around it, and that somehow created a sense of togetherness.
The duality of meaning that can be interpreted from this work is what makes it wonderful. If viewed in person, there is a sense of solemnity and loneliness as it is sitting in the middle of a vast space. Viewing it online via the live stream brings a whole lot more meaning when you see people getting together and interacting with the work, bringing a sense of unity. For me, it somehow carries the message that in these uncertain times, people need to get together to overcome the hardships.
Meat on a Chopping Block was exhibited from Oct 23 – Nov 15 at KongsiKL, Jalan Klang Lama.