Sharon Chin

Hello dear human beings. Greetings from the strange floating world of post-project purgatory.

In which I count the days since Mandi Bunga happened (2 weeks!), and wonder when it’s no longer acceptable to feel disoriented and just sorta… lame and stupid. I’m off the turbo charged art-making hamster wheel and having a hard time adjusting to the speed of everyday life. This always happens. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it still frustrates the hell out of me. The bigger the project, the longer the lag. I can’t get anything done, but I can’t rest either. My energy’s completely depleted, but my mind’s running around like a rat on speed.

Ahhhhhhhh. Dammit. Onwards. Onwards through the fug and the fog.

I’m working on an epic blog about Mandi Bunga, but I honestly don’t know how long it’s going to take. In the meantime, I’m going to share the zine I drew for the project.

Can’t see the reader above? Try here. You’ll also see options to download as PDF.

I’ve never made a zine before. It turned out to be a strange artist statement/mind-map/activity sheet mash-up. I finished penciling the night before leaving for Singapore and inked it in my hotel room in a 36-hour caffeine-fueled marathon that killed my eyes. I wouldn’t recommend this as standard practice. If you love to make stuff and want to do it for the rest of your life, as much as possible please try to do it with proper posture and good light.

I’m proud of this little zine. It almost didn’t get made because I thought it’d be one of those bonus art things, you know, nice to do if I had the time (and I never have the time, being a terrible last minute crammer and perfectionist), but unnecessary. Yet the moment I held it in my hands, all fresh from the printer, I knew it was really important.

In all its tactile hand-drawnness, it’s something that can only fully be experienced as a zine, as a thing you can touch and pass from person to person. No amount of Facebooking, blogging or Instagramming could have extended the aesthetics and ideas of Mandi Bunga in the same way. I suspect I did it also to get out of answering ‘what’s your work about?’; I could just hand the zine to any critic, journalist, auntie, uncle or little kid and say: here. It’s all here.

The original size for this is A2, folded into an 8-page booklet, with a poster on the other side. But you can print it in A3 and get a cute pocket version, like this:

If your grubby little hands yearn to fondle this zine in the flesh, here are hi-res files (click to embiggen) you can print out:

Poster on the back:

This is the text:

Mandi Bunga is a project I dreamt up in 2012. It came from my experiences taking part in Bersih2.0 and 3.0, two momentous street rallies calling for free and fair elections in Malaysia. Bersih means ‘clean’; yellow is the colour adopted by the movement.

This project has nothing to do with Bersih. I can’t deny that Biennale has allowed me to realize my dream; that I am here at the pleasure of the Singaporean goverment, and financed by the taxes of its citizens. To export my politics as if they are consumer goods would be both stupid and meaningless.

Yet it has everything to do with Bersih — without the experience of being part of a huge movement, and struggling not to lose myself in its flaws and contradictions, I would never have arrived at the questions that lie at the heart of this project.

Mandi Bunga consists of 3 simple parts: Gather 100 people to bathe together in public. Before that, everyone makes their own sarong to wear during the bath. Finally, an exhibition documents the process and outcomes.

All 3 actions ask the same questions:

“What does it mean to do something alone?”

“What does it mean to do something together?”

“How can we be ourselves with others?”

I believe these questions are ones we must all struggle with, in the face of rapidly changing times and a challenging future.

I offer this project as a way to ask them, to give them form, to make flowers bloom from the clouds of tear gas.

Photo by Yee I-Lann

Hope you enjoy it as much as I loved making it, and see you when I get out on the other side of fug.

I’m in Singapore, posting this from a hotel room that’s too cold, while the sun burns the pavements outside.

I crossed the airspace two days ago in surreal zombie-dream mode. Losing track of sleep trying to keep track of all the things…

Litres of fabric paint…

200m of yellow cloth, sewn into more than a hundred sarongs by the awesome Mrs Lee of Merlin Tailor, Seapark.

Cutting up whole raft of manila cardboard for a special part of the workshops…

Compressing it all into tiny boxes…

Landing in Singapore, catching a cab to the hotel being all like… ‘hell yeahhh, I got here and I’m ready to rock!!’…

Then realizing that I forgot to buy duty free booze because I was worrying about all my boxes…

Then getting this photo from Ying and Julia who were arranging to send the basins over from KL…

Look at these rockstars. They wore yellow… BY COINCIDENCE!

And FINALLY…. drumroll… you heard it here first, dear people… FINALLY seeing the confirmed venue for the performance on 26 Oct:

Meanwhile, at home, Zedeck tells me the monster pumpkin plant that was taking over the garden has two fruits.

All of the things… happening at once…

Somehow it all fits together.

Love,
me

So in between sending personal emails to over 100 people who signed up for Mandi Bunga, finding yellow basins, dippers, flowers, limes, ordering 200m of yellow fabric and and and etc… I also need to do actual art stuff.

As in, shut off from the list-checking logistical wrangling email email email go go go go go go get it done adrenaline whirlwind… sit down, and MAKE THINGS. It’s like stepping into the one quiet room in an increasingly crazy house. I don’t know whether the tiny quiet room is keeping the whole house going, or vice versa. All I know is that I’m jumping back and forth, between the making and the MAKING IT HAPPEN, dragging, pushing and pulling this thing into existence.

Art. It’s a bloody process.

Ok, where was I? Actual art. Making things. Yes.

So here’s a look at how I designed the stencils that will be used in the sarong making workshops.

First, draw draw draw. Maybe it’s because anyone with access to a screen today is drowning in images, but lately I’ve found that if I want a visual outcome that has texture and quality, I have to base it on something real. I don’t draw because I’m married to the drawing process, but because there’s no other way of finding shapes that mean something to me. I know googling ‘Chrysanthemum flower vector‘ would get me thousands of hits, but none of them would look like this – my shape is the product of time and observation; it comes directly from my world.

Drawing is a good way of finding out what a kaffir lime really looks like. The puckered skin and that little hill where the stem shoots out is what makes it different from all the other limes:

To get an outline for the stencil, I traced over the original drawing:

Faber-Castell PITT artist pen = magic on tracing paper. Pitch black and doesn’t smudge:

All done. My friend Aishah told me that the number of items in the flower bath has to be an odd number – e.g. 3, 5 or 7. That helped me decide how many stencil designs to make:

Scanned into the computer and vectorized:

And finally sent to these talented people: Ijat and Tasniim of Awang Cutter Projex. They’ll be cutting out the stencils from lino (the stuff we use to line our floors and cupboards. Totally Malaysian material) with their magical laser machine. These guys are doing awesome things out of their light-filled studio in Ara Damansara. If you need anything engraved, or cut out to perfect precision, they’re the ones to meet!

Errhhhmerrrgeerrd I can’t wait to see (and show and USE) the stencils when they’re done!

Now, I need to open the door and step out of the quiet room…

… into the rest of the crazy house…

… and out into the world…

…where it’s all happening…

and where I have high hopes of colliding with you, dear reader and human.

Update (1 Oct 2013): The stencils! They are finished. And they are beyond awesome. Here they are hanging out to dry in the evening sun:

Pretty shadows:

Professional stencils are usually made out of mylar, which is hard to source and quite expensive. You can get this lino stuff all over Malaysia. It’s cheap, strong, and flexible – the perfect alternative. A sharp exacto-knife will cut this stuff beautifully. Try it!

First, news from from the epic project front. “Mandi Bunga/Flower Bath” for Singapore Biennale 2013 officially launched last Thursday, if by launching you mean my comrades from Commas and Industry posted it on Facebook, while I stayed glued to my computer, freaking out.

Man, I was anxious. Every project scares me to hell, but the fear-levels with this one surprised even me. Would people ignore it? Would I have to beg in the streets for 100 people to join? Failure? Fail? Fail? FAIL? I didn’t realize until that moment how much this project means to me. For reasons I’ve yet to discover, I’ve put more on the line here – artistically, emotionally – than I ever have before.

(It may have something to do with this being a kind of ‘swan song’ before embarking on a new path that’s been two years in the making. But that’s coming straight from the unformed soup part of my brain; I should leave it there to cook until it’s done.)

The response to “Mandi Bunga” has been awesome. Humbling. Great. You guys shared that thing like a steamboat dinner! Thank you. I love you. We’ve passed the 100 mark, so I’m putting sign-ups on hold for now, while we figure out if we can fit more people in. You can still sign-up to get project updates. I will send you news and special stuff like sneak peeks at my sketchbook.

—

Yes, dear people, Happy Malaysia Day. We are 50 years old.

To celebrate, I drew Medusa, wearing nationalized Kanye shutter shades.

I’m not sure why, beyond acting on orders from the aforementioned great unformed soup, which is basically another name for my subconscious mind.

(Click image to embiggen)

I think she says something about how I see Malaysia, or rather, how I refuse to see her properly, for fear of being turned to stone.

Medusa is one of those great stories, as deeply rooted and as unbreakable as Macbeth. In greek mythology, she’s a Gorgon, a monster with snakes for hair and the power to turn anyone who looks at her into stone. She’s beheaded by a hero named Perseus, who then gives her head to Athena, goddess of war. Athena puts Medusa’s head on a shield called the Aegis, which becomes a powerful symbol of protection.

The other version of her story is much more tragic: Medusa was a ravishingly beautiful human maiden. Poseidon, god of the sea, raped her in one of Athena’s temples. The enraged and victim-blaming Athena turned Medusa into a snake-haired monster, with a face so hideous that all who looked at her would turn to stone.

I used Bernini’s incredibly beautiful, 17th Century marble sculpture of Medusa as reference for my drawing. The nose is mine though. And the lips were inspired by Vivian Lee’s (of #Alvivi). I think it’s safe to say Bernini based his Medusa on the tragic version of her story:

I drew my Malaysia Day Medusa without the shades at first:

I added them so that we could look at her without turning to stone.

And also… so that she could look at us without turning US to stone.

I realize that I’m drawing Malaysia as a monster, which isn’t in the, you know, spirit of celebration, national pride, togetherness, etc.

But that’s how I see her, with racism, corruption, fundamentalism, ignorance and intolerance crowning her beautiful head. I draw her so that I can see her for what she is, and not be tempted by a nostalgic vision of peace and harmony.

I draw her so that I can learn not to be afraid of her.

The thing is, now that I see her like this, she’s more beloved to me than ever.

Image of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Head of Medusa from here.

This is a little hint of what’s going on for “Projek Mandi Bunga”. Been experimenting on our house guests.

I can confirm that the project (and our shower) smells of limau purut (kafir lime). The other ingredients are pomelo leaves and limau kasturi (calamansi lime), all picked from Azharr’s farm nearby.

Gonna be needing alot more of this stuff.

The more I read about mudskippers, the more I fascinated I get with these strange little creatures.

In Malay, they’re called ikan tembakul or blodok.

There’s this great story online explaining why there’s a mudskipper statue on the roof of one of the oldest Chinese temples in Muar, Johor.

According to the story, during Admiral Cheng Ho‘s voyages to Malacca in the 15th Century, he also landed in Muar, Johor. The locals greeted him with a dish of roasted mudskippers, explaining the health benefits: Adam (i.e. humankind) was made from the earth, so eating mudskippers (who live in mudholes) returns some kind of ‘original’ strength and power.

The Admiral was so taken by their generosity that he put a dish of roasted blodok at the Buddhist prayer alter he’d set up. Eventually Chinese people settled there, and their foundation stone is now the 160 year-old Tokong Chor Soo Kong, which has a big pink mudskipper topping the roof.

Great story, right? Except the Admiral was actually a Muslim! (He was also 7 ft tall and had no balls, i.e. a eunuch). His original name was Ma Ho, with ‘Ma’ the surname standing for Muhammad. It seems inconsistent that he’d set up a Buddhist prayer altar.

But I’ve also read that the good Admiral was a most practical diplomat, and tended to carry both Buddhist and Muslim prayer accessories when traveling to distant lands – the better to connect with whatever local culture he encountered.

Anyway, mudskippers have been cavorting at the back of my mind, establishing a funny kingdom there. They jump and dance in the light of the new moon, and wish you selamat hari raya, maaf zahir dan batin.

Filling little bottles with India ink instead of soy sauce. Voila! Art on the go. But I wouldn’t bring them to a sushi picnic.

I spent the last week making this portrait of #Alvivi (click the image for downloadable hi-res version). Their saga unfolded as I drew. I mostly followed it on Facebook – an endless stream of links and comments, butthurt and outrage, condemnation and rationalization.

Paint, paint, paint.

My brush was the only thing that kept me silent. I willed myself not to Facebook my internal monologue, which ran mostly along the lines of: fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck all you closet conservatives in liberal sheep’s clothing, motherfuckers’.

I knew if I status-updated that shit and got 10 likes, I would feel good for 2 seconds. But I didn’t want to feed the internet kraken with my raw mental garbage. Not because I’m better than anyone else, but because that is not my job. My job is to put my mental trash in the compost heap of the self, and wait for it to turn into something worthwhile.

Being an artist = being ruthless enough with yourself to know what’s dressed-up trash and what’s a real opinion, a real thought, a real question.

If you can’t identify this in yourself, there’s no way you’ll be able to tell the difference in the world around you, whether it’s real life or online.

I set out to paint two human beings.

I failed.

I look at the painting from every angle and I know I’ve failed.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was. Disappointed too. I had such noble intentions! Lofty humanist intentions! But I’ve never met #Alvivi. I only know what the internet tells me. Even their likenesses are based on photos I found on Google (warning: link is NFSW). How could I paint them as actual human beings?

I’ve learned that my mind always plays tricks on me, but my hands don’t. They can’t. If I trust them and think through them, what comes out usually has something of truth, just not the truth I wanted.

Instead of Alvin and Vivian, I painted what we’ve turned them into – demi-gods who burn with the heat of suns, or devils bearing hellfire, depending on how you see things.

Alvin and Vivian. Remember these names. This portrait is not about them. This is about us, and the sickness, intolerance, hypocrisy, and moral righteousness of the society we’re making, building, living in. It’s a society that practically weaponizes shame, that doesn’t know the difference between a bad joke and an act of violence, that creates monsters from humans, that uses the incredible tool of the Internet not to communicate, but to dominate.

I have nothing to offer except the admission that I’m right here wallowing in the same shit, indulging the same fears and prejudices, hoping with the hopeless hope that what I do isn’t completely useless and in vain.

And from the shittyness we’re in I also have a proposition, a speck of sand that could be gold dust, or just mud that caught the light.

A proposal for practice, nothing more:

Stop sharing your hate.

Compost the fuck yous.

Turn that shit into gold.

Don’t despair.

Dig deep.

Make art.

Have mercy.

Alvivi’s Facebook and Twitter have been shut down. Their Youtube channel is still up, and you can see the last video they posted before being arrested, denied bail and sent to jail for a week. That video is an apology for any offense their Facebook Ramadan greeting may have caused. They’re out now, but not allowed to use any digital devices.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SexcussionsAlvivi

Sharon Chin

Artist Sharon Chin's Site

Author Archives: Sharon Chin

The Mandi Bunga Zine

All of the things… happening at once

Making the Mandi Bunga stencils

Malaysia/Medusa: Now that I see her

DIY Flower Shower

Aidilfitri Greetings from the Kingdom of Blodok

Art sauce

New brog! Painting #Alvivi, or, Compost the Fuck Yous