Ethereal Birds and Dancing Princesses

The multi-talented and multi-facetted artist Nizam Ambia is, one could say, an artistic conundrum.

Born Mohd. Nizamuddin Ambia in Seri Menanti (Beautiful resting place) in the Royal state of Negri Sembilan, Malaysia, Nizam’s recent success as a modern, innovative Batik fashion designer has, in no way, marred his talent as an exciting and innovative, creative, imaginary artist. From interior design to landscape, fashion, neo-Batik (Blatik) and mixed-media canvas paintings, Nizam is rapidly becoming the Malaysian Renaissance artist - a man for all artistic genres if not seasons.

Nizam Ambia graduated in Graphic Design from Malaysia’s University Institute of Technology MARA (UITM) and worked for TV3, and, later, for Limkokwing University of Creative Technology. While under the auspices of Limkokwing University Nizam created sculptures, interior designs for the café area and canvases of tremendous organic beauty which still grace the walls and spaces at the university after his departure.

It was Nizam’s recent exodus from Limkokwing, in 2005, which enabled him to metaphorically spread his creative wings and soar, Icarus-like, towards an artistic Helios of radiant success. But, unlike Icarus, Nizam is ever watchful of the dangers of flying too high, and remains at heart a genteel and humble soul; this is clearly evident when you meet the artist in person.

Following his soaring success in Malaysia, Nizam has been invited by the Batik Guild UK to display a representation of his works at major galleries across England, in the forth coming year (2007). Nizam is therefore exporting his ethereal creations and dynamic organic designs and showcasing them at various venues including the ancient and prestigious Bath and Gloucester locations.

Nizam Ambia is, perhaps, best known for his batik and fashion designs. It is these elements of his work which appear most in the media and public eye, for Nizam has been honoured many times for both his batik work and his contribution to Malaysian fashion. In this brief article my objective is to lay particular emphasis on Nizam’s work other than the much publicised batik and fashion items, intending, perhaps, to bring about a balance.

Throughout all of Nizam’s expressive works there is a strong stylistic theme of the organic and the fantastic, which includes distant echoes of the form and design of Indian kolam, Malay traditional dances and reflections of the intricate Malay Wayang Kulit (Shadow puppets). The overall thread which permeates Nizam’s works, from paintings to batik is that of fluidity. There is a flow of colour, energy and movement all the way through these works which captivates, then envelops the onlooker, taking the viewer by the hand and leading them into an ethereal dimension overseen and narrated by Nizam the storyteller.

Nizam’s visual art strikes not only chords but whole chord progressions of familiarity, calling to mind a host of artists, styles and genres. Reflected in Nizam’s artwork are genteel watercolours such as those of the Edwardian Danish designer/illustrator Kay Rasmus Nielsen. It is not so much an actuality, a mimesis, but a feeling emanating from Nizam’s work, reminding the viewer of the intricacies of Nielsen’s watercolour illustrations - whose own works, in turn, were influenced by Far Eastern artists like Hokusai and Hiroshge.

Nizam Ambia’s two epic cycles of paintings consist of the Sirih Junjung (elaborate and decorative Betel nut ornamentation) and Puteri Kayangan (Fairyland Princess) series. Essentially these are mixed medium pieces combining divers materials including paint and uncooked rice, both culturally and symbolically representative of joyous celebrations, staff of life and promoter of growth/fecundity.

In Nizam’s Sirih Junjung series we, the onlookers, are presented with intricate organic patterns, stunning designs and evocations of celebration, for harmonious joy and salutation accompanies the giving of the sirih junjung - akin to western concepts of ceremonial flower displays and wedding corsages. Dancing, fluid, points of white light evanesce from the painted surface depicting myriad coloured flowers and translucent foliage, radiant, expectant and beguiling.

The organic floral images of Nizam’s Sirih Junjung series radiate with inner beauty achieved with multiple-layers of paint, giving the ethereal nuance of Leonardo Da Vinci’s sfumato effect used to create his La Joconde's (Mona Lisa), or the other worldly evocation of Gustav Klimt’s delicate casein and gold paintings.

It is no accident that many of the works in this series remind the viewer of the Malaysian cultural mixed heritage, with hints and essences of the Indian rice flour (Kolam) designs, for Nizam has engaged in the landscape representation of these too.

Nizam Ambia’s Puteri Kayangan series is the perfect compliment for his Sirih Junjung series, for the Puteri Kayangan series has all the beauty and mystery of the former with the bonus of figurative additions. In the Puteri Kayangan series abstract organics mingle with exquisitely stylistic dancers and Wayang Kulit-like figures, twisting and dancing their way across his canvases, free from constraining rods and shadowy lives to cavort organically and orgiastic-ally.

And dance is what they do - a vibrant, vivid dance of colour, grace and elegance beckoning the viewer to join the mêlée psychically, spiritually, if not physically. For Nizam’s works are not just makan (food) for the eyes, fodder for the orbs, but sustenance for the psyche/spirit, too.

Like the surreal, imaginary works of Chilean painter Roberto Matta (Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren), Nizam’s works reach down into the very soul of the onlooker filling them with mysterious, elusive, enigmatic otherness, and leaving the onlooker with a spiritual sense of nature’s triumph, in Nizam’s uniquely Asian organic symbolism.

Similar to Matta’s works, plasticity and concreteness fuse in Nizam’s paintings creating a space beyond space, where imagination can project itself into, and the onlooker himself become part of, Nizam’s creations. Fronds, petals, hair, jewels all reach out to the viewer, there but not there, as Rene Magritte might say, tantalising in Nizam’s Malay organic multi-medium fantasies.

In more concrete terms the swirling, sensual, organic neo-Art Nouveau lines of Nizam Ambia’s sculptures bring to mind the complex constructions of the British artist and creator of whimsical kinetic sculptures, Rowland Emett. Emett was the darling of the 1951 Festival of Britain, titillating the crowds with his fine kinetic fantasies, and spreading sculptural humour through his wondrously whimsical, yet delicately sound works. Later Emett’s whimsies featured in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and enlivened Science Centres and Shopping Malls.

Nizam’s three dimensional works have only a passing resemblance to Emett’s, however, for Nizam’s three dimensional works, like the metal neo-Art Nouveau avian colossus which welcomes the visitor to Limkokwing University, appears more heroic than Emett’s sculptures, as if Nizam’s noble thoughts were imbued with solid determination and tangible grace. Nizam’s solidly organic bird sculpture is commandingly spiritual, graceful and elegant, whereas Emett’s works always tip towards humour. Nizam’s majestically symbolic sculpture has the essence of an ethereal phoenix, poignantly reminding the onlooker of the power of learning and the freedom of rebirth inherent in education.

As I started by saying, Nizam Ambia, as an artist is somewhat of a conundrum. Nizam produces stunningly beautiful paintings and a variety of other works too, that is his passion, yet he is able to devote time and energy to prospering the ancient art of batik, and championing increasingly popular fashion attire. Like Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali before him, Nizam Ambia appears to have the ability to transform the eternally plastic into the stunningly beautiful concrete.

Despite writing briefly here about Nizam Ambia’s visual contribution to art and society, there is, of course, only one way that you the reader will be able to know his work, and that is to seek it out for yourself. If you are fortunate enough to be in England next year, then his works will be in many towns and cities there, but for those unable to be in England, but with internet access, Nizam Ambia’s work can be seen on his website http://www.nizamambia.com/00_home.html.

Or you may contact Yayasan Dunia Melayu, who currently represents Nizam and his works, http://www.malayworldfoundation.org/home.htm

Teoh Kai Suan

The artist Teoh Kai Suan’s oil paintings were featured in an exhibition on the Muse floor at Artseni Gallery, Starhill, Kuala Lumpur, in June this year. Teoh, 40, is a graduate from the eminent Kuala Lumpur College of Art and uses his artworks to express his unique perspective on Malaysia’s rural life.

Using imagery imbued with the idyll of romantic rural life, Teoh sets about encapsulating the noble concept of Balik Kampung, or a return to the kampung, except for Teoh it is a Kampung of the mind, of nostalgia and wish fulfilment.

Unlike the depictions by the illustrious actor and film maker Tan Sri P.Ramlee (born Teuku Zararia bin Teuku Nyak Puteh, in Penang1929), Teoh’s kampung is a calm, un-chaotic, romantic snapshot, while his humour is gentle and homogenous unlike Ramlee’s boisterous rambunctiousness - but just as endearing. In Teoh’s canvases couples dance across the hard trodden earth of the Kampung floor; families, rotund and serene pose for snapshot portraits beneath Rousseau trees. Young kite flyers sprint, stylistically - she clutching her handbag while he holds aloft the kite which is their excuse for being together, both gaze at the viewer. Throughout Teoh’s work the viewer is always present - acknowledged by the characters Teoh has painted. A motorcycle rider squints to see the spectator, while the female dancer purses her lips to blow the observer a kiss. Whether soaking in a river or flying a kite Teoh’s characters benignly engage with the gallery audience.

Teoh’s almost voyeuristic entry into rural (Ulu) Kampung life is reminiscent of the cartoonist Lat’s (Mohammad Nor bin Khalid, b. 1951) work. Lat’s Kampung Boy (1977) charted Lat’s birth and the first few years of his life, based on his recollections of rustic life in Perak. Teoh brings us an altogether different perspective of rural kampung life, in the neighbouring state of Kedah - a more sedate, placid portrayal, enlivened by his vibrant choice of colour. Lat’s humour prods the memory by depicting life in any rural village almost anywhere in the world, except for the fact he is portraying his personal reality, of his own kampung. There is universality to Lat’s character’s antics, a resonance and reflection of rural life the world over.

Teoh too has this ability of capturing moments, snapshots, of rural life, though there is also a stylistic over-layering reminiscent of those Maoist posters seen during China’s Cultural Revolution era. Like the Chinese posters Teoh depicts a promised land, a rural idyll free from the yoke of stress and striving, a land of equality and the common good. The happy, smiling, poster faces spoke of a new order and a break with tradition, where Teoh injects a limitless, timeless quality into his Malaysian nostalgic revelry, embracing kampung tradition.

While having similarities to the art of China’s Cultural Revolution, Teoh’s work is evidently manifest as an Asian incarnation of a western art figurative tradition, dating back to painters like Diego Velazquez and Francisco de Goya. Both of these artists portrayed sitters with a fuller figure, not the wraith-like models of 21^st Centaury.

Teoh continues in this tradition of artists specialising in depicting plump/rotund, larger than life people, just like the Colombian painter Fernando Botero (b.1932, Medellin, Colombia). Botero presented his works in an exhibition in Singapore 2004/2005 also bringing corpulent figures dancing their way across his canvases and statuary. Botero, has become renowned for his paintings of overweight and larger than life figures. Having adopted a conscious style with his The Bridal Chamber or Homage to Mantega, in 1958, Botero has, for nearly half a centaury, depicted the larger figure in all its style and glory.

Echoing Botero and reflecting Latin American artists like Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Teoh encapsulates the notion of simple, rural home-life. Men wearing sarongs and Japanese slippers serenade along with their children, Chinese eyes wrinkle in smile, cheeks flush with sheer joie de vivre. All is well, and all is right in Teoh’s tranquil pastoral Eden. There are not the marks of toil and strife we notice in Rivera’s work, nor in his fellow muralist Siqueiros’ visuals. Teoh does not ask his audience to get up and react against tyranny but rather to revel in an idea, the idea of Balik Kampung – the return home, back to the ideal family living in the ideal world, back to nature and back to calm sanity, away from the artificial construct of the city and its depersonalisation, its isolation and its neglect.

Teoh’s narrative continues to blend Asian imagery with western figurative tradition and romantic idyll. In many respects we have much to thank Teoh for, his canvases - yes, his hard work - yes, but much more than that - his reminder of what is really important – home and family, thank you Teoh Kai Suan.