ART-IT
This year Amir Zainorin returns from Denmark for his first ever solo exhibition in his home country. It is indeed a symbolic and meaningful year, a time when the Malaysian visual arts scene is blooming alongside the enthusiasm felt by Malaysians for the country's 50th year of independence.
Just as there has always been an intimate relationship between aesthetics and politics, so have art, politics and power long been among Amir's favourite themes. Invoking issues largely stimulated by mass media and consumerism, his pop oeuvre carries a sense of illustrious advertising images immersed in Warholian vibes. Here, Amir assumes the role of an 'adbuster', creating his own 'advertisements' infused with paradoxical ingredients.
The Opening presents a series of collage and installation works laden with their own semiotics and layers of parody and satire. Amir recycles paper materials such as posters and newspapers to form new collage works embellished with lines and colours. The techniques of bricolage, also appearing in recent works by the Malaysian pop artists Ise and Bob Azmin, seem simple yet effective expedients for confronting issues associated with media and consumerism. Discarded materials, which to some are mere commercial waste, are transformed into ironic appropriations through intelligent artistic treatment. Their potential to embody the ideal post-modern and post-colonial metaphor, in the light of the construct of The Aesthetic of Garbology, has been demonstrated by many artists.
In Dr. M with Flags, the Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Mahathir, a person responsible for the rapid development and modernization of the country, is seen in mirrored images waving the country's flags with great pride. Here, Amir asks whether it is necessary to produce more clones of Dr. Mahathir's stature in order to heighten the country's image, as suggested by the twin towers illustrated in the background, or, from a different perspective, whether Malaysia has changed too fast and reached a critical phase in the deterioration of local identity.
In another piece titled Tembak!/Shoot!, connections to the landscape of Amir's birthplace can be traced. The traditional Malay practices of Main Puteri and Mak Yong, which originally functioned as a ritual for worship and served a healing purpose as well as forming a type of 'folk entertainment', have fallen into near obsolescence. Today, these cultural practices are threatened not only by censorship at the hands of the dominant political party, but also by the pace of modernization swiftly transforming the country. With the rise of new hospitals and effective, modern methods of medicinal cure, there are more choices than ever before. In terms of entertainment, people in general seem content with the offerings on local and satellite TV and rarely take interest in traditional performance anymore. Amir's work implicitly opens up a dialogue in regard to the effects of mass media, aspects of modernization and our future world.
In this exhibition Amir documents, reminds, investigates and at times projects discourses on typical concerns surrounding the lives of contemporary human beings. The clash of cultures and traditions, freedom of expression, the absurdity of stereotype and cultural censure are visually captured and scrutinised by Amir's clever composition of images. Delving deeply, he engages with subject matter that bears relevance to the fundamental questions of globalization.
Nur Hanim Khairuddin, ART-IT.
Nur Hanim Khairuddin, ART-IT.
