Art As a Form of Subversion (Q1)

On the 10th of June, my class went on a trip to some art galleries. In this post, I will mainly be talking about a piece of artwork which caught my attention from the Ilham Contemporary Forum.

The Ilham Contemporary Forum has 7 different curators and features artwork from 27 artists, This exhibition is further broken down into four "grouping"s, which are titled
(i) “play, negotiation, resistance”;
(ii) “discomfort”;
(iii) “reassemble”; and
(iv) “archive, narrative, world”

The Soil Is Not Mine is a project by Tan Zi Hao which he started in 2013. The artist started this project by filling up 50 plastic packets with soil from Malay Reservation Lands, soil from the artist's home, a torn copy of the artist's birth certificate, and the artist's sperm. He then traded each bag of soil with the people around him, with the only condition for trade being that the person needs to convince the artist that the object traded has "Bumiputera value".

The final product was a case filled with various items, each with a number describing what it was and how it was traded with the artist.

Yes, that small glass bottle contains human saliva

An empty glove? Nope, apparently it's filled with air exhaled from the artist's friend. 

"Bumiputera" is a term with jawi origins which is used in Malaysia to describe people of the Malay race, or other indigenous races of Malaysia. It can be literally translated as "son of the soil". The term came into popular use after the violent May 13 Incident of 1969. Following racial tensions, the then-Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak coined the term and used it while implementing the affirmitive action based New Economic Policy (NEP) which was intended to help bring the local Malay population out of poverty. Under our current system, "bumiputera"s are entitled to a range of benefits, from lower housing prices and higher quotas for intakes into local universities.

By allowing people to give their own definitions of what contains "bumiputera" value, the artist is highlighting the loose and ambiguous definitions surrounding the idea of what exactly a bumiputera is, and whether that makes them any more special than others who arrived after them. 

Melaka, one of the oldest recorded sultantes in peninsular Malaysia,was founded by a Raja named Parameswara, both of these being terms with Indian origins. Though I'm not a historian and Malaysian History books like to skirt the topic, it is entirely likely that one of the earliest Malaysian dynasties was founded by an Indian leader. The Peranakan can trace their origins back to around 1500 AC, practising a unique blend of Hokkien and Malay culture. If we were to judge the right of a person to land purely on how many generations back their ancestors had been living there, where does one draw the line? If we go far back enough, could we simply claim that everyone is actually a "bumiputera" of Africa?

With objects on display ranging from pubic hair to a 10-cent coin, the artist breaks down the rigid ideas of what makes up the social construct of "bumiputera". He is allowing those he traded with to collectively define the term, putting together a physical representation of a word. By questioning what is usually left unquestioned, the artist also allows viewers themselves to decide whether they agree with this little collection of odd things, and hopefully challenges them to rethink norms they might be used to. 

References:

Chrisman, R. (1995). Affirmative Action: Extend It. The Black Scholar, 25(3), pp.1-1.

Tan, C. B. (1979). Baba Chinese, Non-Baba Chinese and Malays: A Note on Ethnic Interaction in Malacca. Asian Journal of Social Science, 7(1), pp.20-29.

Kua, K. S (2008). Racial conflict in Malaysia: against the official history. Race & Class, 49(3), pp.33-53.

Rudolph, J. (1998). Reconstructing collective identities: The Babas of Singapore. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 28(2), pp.203-232.

Torii, T. (1997). The New Economic Policy And The United Malays National Organization -With Special Reference to the Restructuring of Malaysian Society-. The Developing Economies, 35(3), pp.209-239.