A LEAF Through History by Chang Yoong Chia presents a “message through medium”. Yoong Chia’s use of batik technique to narrate the layered history of Malaysia is laden with meaning.
Instead of the common flora and fauna motifs found on Malaysian batik, Yoong Chia chooses to draw gambir, rubber and palm plantations, exhausted rubber tappers, hungry eaters of tapioca during the Japanese occupation, and the “dangers” of our forest who are now endangered themselves – orangutans and tigers.
Eddin Khoo who wrote the essay for the show, noted: “It was the plantation that dragged this tropical landscape into the modern age, transforming the land from spring of harvest to source of capital, fittingly bequeathed the term ‘cash crop.’
"The wave of immigration – often in conditions of debt slavery – which followed altered the racial and cultural demographic of the Malay Peninsula indelibly.”
He quoted historian Lynn Hollen Lees, who simply stated "Rubber reconstructs Malaya” in her study of the plantation and its subjects, Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects.
The narratives on Yoong Chia’s batik recount the history of cash crop plantations in Malaysia and how “amongst the rows of plants are hidden joy, hunger, love, envy, friendship and violence”.
The artist deconstructs batik from being a fabric that is associated with being decorative to something entirely different through his art: “It is a glimpse into the landscape of profit, invasion, colonialism, exploitation and ecosystem, as well as migration, setting down roots and preserving traditions.”
Batik has become a form of visual art storytelling that is compelling us to confront the medium as well as the story.
In this show, he has chosen to explore the medium of batik, which to him has a national identity from the time of independence.
The artist by using batik as a medium but with new narratives, questions us with his works, “have the new narratives of Malaysia replaced the layers of our past?”
Yoong Chia is a graduate of Malaysian Institute of Art in 1996 with a Diploma of Fine Art in Painting. He recently completed artist residencies in Leipzig, Germany and in Kelantan, Malaysia.
He is a versatile artist who has shown skilful work in a variety of mediums with the sensibility of a painter. His artworks have included unusual paintings on leaves, shells, eggshells and constructed stamp collages.
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Yoong Chia has been widely shown in museums and galleries internationally. He exhibited in the 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Japan, Yokohama Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan, Musee D’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France and at Jeonbuk Museum of Art, Korea. In 2018, Yoong Chia had a mid-career survey exhibition at the National Gallery of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.
His artworks have been collected by museums including the National Art Gallery Malaysia, Singapore Art Museum, and in South Korea, the Gwangju City Art Museum as well as Jeonbuk Art Museum.
A Leaf Through History launches tomorrow (August 6) and is available for viewing at Cult Gallery September 6. Viewing will be by appointment only. – The Vibes, August 5, 2022
