The main exhibition acts as a treatise on contemporary art, and is at the Malaysian National Art Gallery which, for some time, has had a below par reputation. Blame for this might be found in many quarters, not least in the paltry sum the Malaysian government extends to art, its conservation and its preservation.
In this respect, Malaysia is unlike its neighbour, Singapore, which has all the veneer of understanding the necessity of the spiritual, as well as the fiscal value of art. Singapore has rallied around contemporary art, with copious initiatives, galleries and museums and has taken the local initiative with recourse to the vagaries of contemporary Art, love it or hate it. The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) has been at the forefront of contemporary art in the region since 1996. Now it is Kuala Lumpur’s turn to shine.
Sheltering under the umbra of a Biennale, Kuala Lumpur has collected many works by 120 international artists, from countries as diverse as The Philippines, China, Cambodia, Sweden, Palestine, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Japan and, of course, Malaysia, to be seen by visitors until March 2018. This is not to be confused with Malaysia’s other biennale, the northern ‘Langkawi Art Biennale’ which began in 2014, and continued last year (2016).
Terms like ‘biennale’ and ‘contemporary art’ can appear somewhat confusing, and elitist. Biennale has come to mean an exhibition of ‘contemporary’ art, every two years and is, of course, Italian, hailing back to 1895, with origins in La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) Venice, Italy.
That original series of Venetian exhibitions is now 122 years old. By 1910, La Biennale di Venezia was exhibiting works by the Futurist Marinetti, the ‘secessionist’ Gustav Klimt, Renoir, Courbet, but not Picasso. His work was deemed too novel for the delicate Venetian taste. According to the Venice Biennale’s history, 1920 was the time of the avant-garde with Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Die Brücke being exhibited.
Between1948 and1954, and here is the confusing part, ‘ the Art Exhibitions became an observatory on contemporary art and avant-garde work. Awards were given to Braque (1948), Matisse (1950), Dufy (1952), Ernst and Arp (1954). In 1950, the US pavilion presented works by Pollock, Gorky and, for the first time, De Kooning (in 1954 he returned with 27 paintings). Alexander Calder, in 1952, was the first major American artist to win the Gran Premio di Scultura.’ Or so we are told by the Venice Biennale website. Confusing? Yes, confusing, because the history of the term ‘contemporary art’ varies enormously.
According to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in New York, ‘contemporary art’ begins in 1977, others are less precise and select somewhere within the 1970s as the beginning. The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), in London, was founded in 1947 and, as we saw above, the Venice Biennale was already engaging with ‘ contemporary art’ back in 1948. Britain’s Tate suggests ‘In relation to contemporary art museums, the date of origin for the term ‘contemporary art’ varies.’
If the new Kuala Lumpur Biennale 2017 is about contemporary art, which seems suggested in the Biennale handout - ‘Among the objectives of the KL Biennale are: to expand NAG’s networking and collaboration opportunities; to drive the development at international level of the country’s contemporary art industry…’ then what is this thing called ‘contemporary art’?
Where ‘modern art’ seemed to be mostly concerned with painting and sculpture, ‘contemporary art’ is so widely based as to gather to itself performance, installation art, video or other types of lens-based art and, in other words, art which is seen as contemporary may, and is, made from anything. It is no longer static, and frequently embroils itself in controversy.
In one contemporary art museum in Milan (MA*GA, opened 1966), exhibits to the ‘Urban Mining’ display included a variety of materials including Cesare Pietroiusti’s aged paper with type-written text, Christiane Löhr’s grass sculptures as well as experimental video. In the recent (21st October to 5th November 2017) Karachi Biennale, Huma Mulji's broken and twisted street lamp installation ('An Ode to a Lamppost That Got Accidentally Destroyed in the Enthusiastic Widening of Canal Bank Road,’) inside an old law bookshop (Pioneer Book Store), caused a ruckus in and out of the art world. Conservationists, book store owner and bookshop conservationist were appalled at the insensitive installation of such a large, flickering, fractured, lamp post within such a small space. It threw up questions of artists’ privilege, sensitivity to natural environment and, most of all, was controversial and a constant talking point.
When we peak of ‘contemporary art’, there are, of course, tie-ins to what we have called avant-garde art, to Dada and Surrealism and practitioners like Marcel Duchamp (readymades), Max Ernst (frontage, collage and montage), and the American Joseph Cornell (surreal boxes) and, certainly surrealism and cinema (Robert Wiene’s ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari’ (1920), Rene Clair’s ‘Entr’Acte' (1924) and Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929)). Which begs the question as to the originality of ‘contemporary art’ or, alternately, if we are now in a state of anything goes, perhaps originality no longer matters and we are all free to loan from past decades, be inspired by other media just as Pop art (Roy Lichtenstein) loaned from comic books, or Picasso and Brancusi were inspired by African art.
Biennale’s have began sprouting up like art mushrooms around the globe. In his book ‘Playing to the Gallery’ (2014) British artist Grayson Perry counted as many as 220 biennales around the world. As well as Malaysia’s two biennales, KL and Langkawi), its neighbour, Singapore, held its latest biennale in 2016. Across the globe, Ecuador, Turkey, Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sweden, USA, Italy, Lithuania, Brazil, Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, France, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Germany and others held at least one biennale in 2017.
The KL Biennale 2017 presents Alami Belas (translated by the National Art Gallery as …Be Loved). In the handout, ‘Alami Belas’ is referred to as being….
‘Quite close to the meaning of the phrase 'be loved'. ‘Belas’ refers to the sense of love
that comes from the depth of the soul, and relates also to compassion, sincerity, happiness, honesty, hope and sustainability. Belas is an important aspect of living together in a shared space. This biennale’s theme of "Alami Belas / Be Loved" highlights a plethora of social issues related to human reactions to and interactions with nature. The aim is to provide moments of contemplation to reassess various human actions and behaviours as reflected in the works by invited artists featured in the "Petals of Love" segment'.
There are five segments to the Biennale, which include;
1.Love For Humanity.
The love for humanity focuses on disaster victims, the disabled, indigenous people, the poor in urban and rural areas, the elderly, orphans, homeless children, single mothers and the victims of abuse.
2.Love For Nature.
The love for nature focuses on the nature, endangered habitat, natural environment, flora and fauna to ensure a balance between sociology development and nature preservation.
3.Love For Animals.
Love For Animals is a special dedication for abused animals and animals going to extinct. The focus is on the endangered species due to habitat destruction caused by human.
4.Love For Heritage .
Love for heritage can be divided into tangible heritage such as architecture and nature such as flora and fauna as well as intangible heritage such as performance arts, visual arts, religious ritual, music and songs that are an added value for the tourists.
5.Love For Our Legendary Icons / Spiritual Love .
The Love for our legendary icons is evaluated through the legacy of culture and arts. This activity will be focusing on the contributions toward societal development, animal, heritage and environmental conservation. The spiritual theme will showcase artworks that are spiritual.
I had visited the main exhibition, at the Malaysian National Art Gallery, on its seventh day of being open to the public. It was impressive. Possibly the very best that the National Art Gallery has yet to present, however, there were still a few flaws.
While many of the galleries were (mostly) up an running, by no means all were. Essentially, one week into public viewing, object labels were missing, as were textural wall panels. Here I give the National Art Gallery the benefit of the doubt, and assume that those exhibits now with only Malay text panels will, at some point, also have English for those many foreign visitors who would not understand Malay.
Several galleries on the first floor, and one on the top floor, had workmen busying themselves amidst dust and rolls of bubble wrap. Step ladders were strewn everywhere, as were cables, tins of paint and an assortment of tools and implements. While I understand that the ‘opening’ of the Biennale is on the 23rd of November, perhaps the National Art Gallery should have delayed its opening to the public from the 1st of November until the 24th, as the galleries are not yet ready.
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