Anak Alam (Photo credit: Naskhah Percuma)
There was a conversation I once had at Rumah Titi by Frinjan that stayed with me.
I cannot remember the exact words, but the idea was simple.
Art people like to talk about independence.
Independent artists.
Independent spaces.
Independent practices.
But in reality, we are deeply interdependent.
At first, it sounded almost contradictory.
After all, the image of the artist is often built around solitude. The lone figure in the studio. Alone with their ideas. Alone with their materials. Alone with the slow and often uncertain process of making.
The art world reinforces this image too.
We celebrate individual artists.
Solo exhibitions.
Artist biographies.
Awards.
Collections.
Careers.
The narrative almost always returns to the individual.
Yet when I look at the Malaysian art ecosystem more closely, artists rarely remain alone for very long.Sooner or later, they gather.
They form collectives.
Sometimes formally.
Sometimes informally.
Sometimes through a shared manifesto or common objective.
Sometimes simply because they occupy the same studio, the same neighbourhood, the same conversations.
Which raises an interesting question.
If artists are often understood as individuals, why do they keep forming collectives?
Perhaps this is also why I never found the idea of the solitary artist entirely convincing.
Back in 2010, ARTO Movement was formed by a group of Fine Art students who found themselves asking a practical question, “How do we survive within the Malaysian art ecosystem?”
We believed that surviving within the Malaysian art ecosystem would be easier together than alone.
Opportunities could be shared.
Resources could be pooled.
Exhibitions could be rganised collectively.
Knowledge moved more freely through conversation than through isolation.
Looking back, I realise that what we were building was not just a collective. We were building a support system.
And perhaps that is what many collectives ultimately become.
Not merely groups of artists working together, but structures of mutual support within an ecosystem that can often feel uncertain.
Years later, a smaller group emerged from within ARTO Movement itself.
Bukan Seni-Man.
Seven members with a shared belief that art can be anything, but not everything. While the phrase often sparked debate, it reflected a desire to think critically about the boundaries of artistic practice rather than accept them unquestioningly.
While both collectives had their own identity and direction, I realise that neither collective emerged because we rejected individuality. Instead the opposite was true. The collective existed precisely because each member wanted to continue developing their own practice.
A collective, I believe, reflects the same underlying impulse.
The desire to think together.
To challenge one another.
To create a space where ideas could develop through dialogue rather than isolation.
A collective is rarely formed out of nowhere.
More often than not, it emerges through proximity.
Sometimes that proximity comes through shared ideas.
Sometimes through common socio-political concerns.
Sometimes through a particular platform or objective.
And very often, it begins with something much simpler.
People occupying the same space.
The same campus.
The same neighbourhood.
The same conversations.
In U12, Shah Alam, for example, many collectives emerged through a shared educational background. A significant number of artists operating in the area were graduates of UiTM's Fine Art programme. The same can be said for Ara Damansara Artists (ADA), where the collective identity is tied not only to artistic practice but also to a shared locality.
When we look at the history of Malaysian art collectives, proximity appears again and again.
The Penang Impressionists.
The Selangor Art Society.
The Wednesday Art Group.
Angkatan Pelukis SeMalaysia.
Different names. Different contexts. Yet all emerging from the same basic impulse: artists seeking one another out rather than working entirely alone.
They gathered.
They discussed.
They organised.
They worked within communities rather than in isolation.
Even Anak Alam, often regarded as Malaysia's first true artist collective, emerged from this same impulse.
Not merely to make art together.
But to create an environment where artists could exist together.
Yet if collectives emerge so naturally within the art ecosystem, perhaps the more important question is not why they form.
Perhaps the question is what they make possible.
Because most collectives do not simply function as groups of artists sharing a name.
They become spaces of exchange.
Ideas move between members.
Knowledge is passed around.
Opportunities circulate.
Someone hears about an exhibition opportunity and shares it with others.
Someone learns a technical skill and teaches it to the group.
Someone introduces a curator.
Someone recommends a gallery.
What appears from the outside as a collection of individuals often functions internally as a network of support.
And perhaps this is why collectives continue to emerge generation after generation.
Not because artists are incapable of working alone.
Most artists spend countless hours alone in their studios.
The making itself is often solitary.
But the conditions that allow that practice to continue are rarely created alone.
Artists need conversations.
They need feedback.
They need communities that understand the particular uncertainties of artistic life.
In this sense, a collective becomes more than a platform.
It becomes an ecosystem within an ecosystem.
A smaller structure that helps artists navigate a larger one.
This may also explain why many collectives eventually change shape.
Some dissolve.
Some become spaces.
Some become organisations.
Some remain active only through friendships that continue long after the collective itself has faded.
Yet even when the structure disappears, its effects often remain.
The exhibitions that happened.
The collaborations that emerged.
The careers that were supported.
The conversations that altered the direction of someone's practice.
These things rarely appear in official histories, but they shape the ecosystem nonetheless.
Perhaps this is why measuring a collective solely through longevity feels insufficient.
A collective does not necessarily fail because it ends.
Its value may lie in what it enabled while it existed.
The artist who exhibited for the first time.
The curator who found collaborators.
The writer who discovered a voice.
The friendships that continued beyond the lifespan of the collective itself.
Looking back, I find myself returning to that conversation at Rumah Titi by Frinjan.
But perhaps independence has always been slightly misunderstood.
Because the Malaysian art ecosystem has never been built by isolated individuals.
It has been built through relationships.
Through conversations.
Through communities.
Through artists repeatedly finding one another and deciding, however briefly, to move forward together.
And perhaps that is what a collective really is.
Not the opposite of individual practice.
But one of the conditions that makes individual practice possible in the first place.
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