Who Decides Whose Narratives Get to be Told in Malaysian Art History? by Sarah Leong

Anita Dee Majanil, Makan Mee di Kota Marudu (date unspecified). Source: Sabah Art Gallery

Sitting in a Malaysian Modern Art history class as an undergraduate fine art student in Sarawak about 10 years ago, with the entire syllabus based on Redza Piyadasa & TK Sabapathy’s Modern Artists of Malaysia (1983), it was hard not to ignore the absence of Sabah & Sarawak artists from the narratives. Well, to be fair, the book was intended to serve as a starting point for the advancement of art-critical studies in Malaysia[1]; however, the subsequent books on Malaysian Modern Art history were still largely based on this historical ‘canon’. The East Malaysian representation only emerged in the 1980-1990s through the ITM-trained or Bakat Muda Sezaman artists such as Awang Damit Ahmad and Bayu Utomo Radjikin. Not surprisingly, with the canon that remained unchallenged, the East Malaysian artists’ representation was completely left out of the Perkembangan Seni Visual di Malaysia chapter in the Pendidikan Seni Visual Tingkatan Satu textbook.

Sabah and Sarawak had their own art scenes as early as the 1940s with the Kuching Art Club (1949) as one of the longest-running art clubs in Malaysia, still operating today under the name Sarawak Fine Arts Society. In Sabah, our visual art history dates back to the 1940s with Datuk Simon Yew producing paintings and drawings from his scouting trips while also serving as a teacher in Sandakan. Datuk Mohd Yaman Ahmad Mus established the Sabah Art Club in 1958, paving the way for the Sabah Art Gallery's establishment in 1983 and the annual state art competition Karya Pilihan Tahunan Negeri Sabah which began in 1985.

So why have these names and events remained absent in the Malaysian Modern art narratives? The narratives aren’t new either; in fact, Universiti Malaysia Sabah published a few works as early as 2005[2] that discuss Sabah's visual art history. Yet, they did not make it into my Malaysian Modern art class syllabus in 2014, not even the Kuching Art Club. I came across an excerpt from Between Generations: 50 Years Across Modern Art in Malaysia (2007), a publication accompanying an exhibition featuring 25 artists at the time; the curators’ understanding of the art scene was shaped by what had been published, with the same ‘Modern Artists of Malaysia’ as the key reference. While the curators said they did not mean to reinforce the ‘canon’ of Modern artists of Malaysia[3], yet the authoritative voices in Malaysian visual art communities have also made little attempt to critically address the absence of Sabah and Sarawak narratives in Modern art history to this day.

One could argue this is unintentional, but “Malaysian Modern art history” cannot fully represent the country’s artistic development when Sabah and Sarawak artists are structurally absent from the narrative. The underrepresentation of Sabah and Sarawak artists in the Modern art historical canon has not only resulted in pioneer artists from these regions being rarely published or taught in textbooks alongside pioneer artists like Abdullah Ariff and Syed Ahmad Jamal, but also perpetuates the false narrative that these regions had no artistic development during the Malaysian Modern art era. This would end up creating an epistemic hierarchy in Malaysian art historical narratives – who gets to be cited and whose works get collected.

While there is still much to be done for Malaysian art history in general, I wonder: how loud does one need to speak for the underrepresented narratives from Sabah and Sarawak during the Malaysian Modern art era to finally be heard by the authoritative voices of the Malaysian visual art community? And if they did finally pay attention to us, would the canon finally be updated in the university’s Malaysian Modern Art class required reading and the KSSM textbook?

[1] T. K. Sabapathy and Redza Piyadasa, Modern Artists of Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Ministry of Education Malaysia, 1983).

[2] Ismail Ibrahim, Sejarah Perkembangan Seni Lukis Sabah (Kota Kinabalu: Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 2005).

[3] Hasnul J. Saidon and Beverly Yong, eds., Between Generations: 50 Years Across Modern Art in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press; Penang: Universiti Sains Malaysia Press; Valentine Willie Fine Art, 2007), 14-15.