1965:
Membina Semula Monumennya
An installation of drawings by Nadiah Bamadhaj
Opening remarks by Angela
Hijjas
I am honoured to be invited
to open this outstanding exhibition in Galeri Petronas. I have been intrigued
by watching Nadiah weave paper into maps and sculpt forms out of plaster
of Paris, but I did not have a clear understanding of the cohesion of
the exhibition until I saw the final display of the scale and content
of her intentions.
The title Nadiah chose,
1965 Rebuilding its Monuments,
unites all the disparate
elements into a cohesive creation. I
suspect that all of us have a fragmented understanding, at best, of the
events in 1965, but this exhibition brings them all together. The exhibition
highlights the separate events of the overthrow of Sukarno by Suharto,
the subsequent slaughter of suspected Communists in Java and Bali, the
split between Malaysia and Singapore, and the foreign construct of the
domino theory that overshadowed the entire region. The year 1965 represented
a major turning point in the history and culture of this region, and Nadiah's
exhibition forces us to realise not only that no event occurs in isolation,
but also that a new marker or monument of 1965 is required.
I would like to note some
of my impressions from viewing the exhibition.
The first segment represents
the arsenal of Communism in Indonesia, and the wave of revolution and
violence from Jakarta which topples the original monument to independence
from colonisation. The catastrophe of crisis is brilliantly illustrated
by the torn hole of society's woven fabric, frayed and broken around a
black abyss, and the sheer size of the archipelago as it stretches beyond
the horizons, with only violence for a compass.
The next segment commemorates
the subsequent bloodletting. Half a million people were slaughtered by
militant Muslims in the backlash against Communism, while the Indonesian
military stood by. In Nadiah's work, the sparseness of the remaining landscape
is haunted by the lack of figures, even the tomb stones are massed together
in an unfamiliar and unacceptable way. A single monolithic stone is felled
in grief, while Arabic numerals spiral out of control.
The quieter worlds of Malaysia
and Singapore were not immune to the upheavals of that year. The declared
objectives of 'peace, tolerance and stability' were undermined by communal
insecurities. In the next sector of the exhibition we see the postcolonial
network coming apart in our own country, as Singapore was forced out to
find its own way. The emergence of the so-called Malay Ultras effectively
destroyed the marriage, and we see the procession of the hantaran
(gifts in a traditional Malay wedding) tumble into the crevasse.
The final sector of the exhibition
looks at how the rest of the world perceived the region at this time,
a perception dominated by the so-called domino theory. Escalating tensions
in the region between Communism and the American Way were an unspoken
omnipresence in Southeast Asia. Now it is apparent that many events at
the time were engineered by the centres of the Cold War. In Nadiah's work,
the tiny local protagonists are surrounded by the interests of these larger
powers, disguised in the traditional regalia of the shadow play. The larger
powers, like the shadow puppeteers, were supposedly magnanimous, but ignored
the needs of Southeast Asia for the sake of their own agendas.
The exhibition comes full
circle, returning to the arsenal of Communism and the violence between
Right and Left, the recent horrors, and the reactions of neighbouring
countries and the international community. After several revolutions of
the exhibition, one has an impression of the drama and complexity of those
times and of how each event fuelled and influenced the others. Traditional
history tends to itemize events on a time scale and from a single point
of view, but experiencing the power of these individual events and realizing
how they influence each other is the great message of this exhibition.
There is also another imperative
in this show: the need to commemorate by reinventing our monuments.
After the First World War
between 1914 and 18, monuments sprang up all over England propounding
'For God, King and Country', glorifying the dead while while never questioning
the responsibility of the existing power structure. But the process of
modernization unleashed by the war left people feeling betrayed by the
same God, King and Country. The tone of later monuments changed to 'Never
Again' and 'Lest We Forget', which provide none of the comfort of glorious
death but reassert the absolute imperative to remember.
The monument to the Vietnam
War in the United States is a memorial that was very long in coming. It
commemorates a lost war with a discredited cause. It honours individual
soldiers who gave their lives, but it still
only tells one side of the story. One day I hope there will be a parallel
monument to the other sides. Any monument, like the Vietnam War Memorial,
reminds us of the imperfections of history and the necessity for constant
revision. Periodically we need to recast
our monuments in a manner that relates
to the changes we have experienced since, because any monument to a major
event also marks the beginning of a new era that was built on the past.
Often damage is caused not
just by the commemorated events, but by the monuments that remain to perpetuate
the old myths. There is no predominantly right way to remember and memories
do change over time. Rather than accepting the platitudes of existing
monuments and the history books, this exhibition marks a new interpretation
of an important period in the history of Southeast Asia, calling us to
build again on our new understanding.
Quite apart from the cultural
importance of Nadiah's exhibition, the work is remarkable in Malaysia
because it deals not only with visual impact, but with underlying ideas.
Betrayed by history as written in books, Nadiah communicates her strong
intellectual ideas in a different medium. Not only has she accomplished
the presentation of ideas as an art form, but she has built a new monument
to remembrance, cast in the idiom of our own time but in memory of all
that has gone before.
Angela Hijjas
12 April, 2001
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