Sharon Chin

Hello dear readers! Welcome to another Fertilizer Friday. Sorry this is a day late – had trouble with the Tumblr servers yesterday.

Fertilizer Fridays are interviews with artist friends. It’s about honest, casual conversation, sharing ideas + busting myths about being an artist/making art.

I met Yoong Chia when he was working at Reka Art Space where I had my first solo exhibition in 2005. A work of his sits in our library – a painting on the inside of a crab shell. It’s a small piece of his amazingly rich visual world.

Can’t tell you how happy I am to share this conversation. Yoong Chia’s answers are practical, wise and insightful, and I hope you get as much out of them as I did!

Self-Portrait Radiating, 2006, Oil on Seashell, 13cm x 13cm x 2.8cm

Just like everyone else, artists have good days and bad days. Could you describe what your working day is like, a good one and a bad one?

a) GOOD –
b) BAD –

When I was younger, I was at the mercy of my emotions. I was in cyclical state where first I would be euphoric for few a days, then, gradually descended into periods of deep sadness the following days and a few days later, I would become happy again.

I used to fear my happiness because I knew depression will come later, and I was optimistic during my sadness for I knew I would become happy again soon. And throughout all this, I continue to do my artwork. It was a way to negotiate with my emotions, to make friends with them.

It took some time, but eventually, like a muscle, my emotions became stronger and my artwork improved as well.

I don’t think we should call certain working days good or bad, because it is essentially just how we feel at that particular moment. And because by doing so, we limit our commitment to dealing with emotions we don’t like and thus will never be able to resolve.

Traveling Plant, 2006, Oil on Canvas, 64cm x 56cm

The title of your 2009 solo exhibition ‘The 2nd Seven Years’ really struck me because it highlights the idea of there being significant turning points in an artist’s life. It’s been exactly seven years since I first started my ‘professional’ art journey, and without warning there was a deep change how I think, feel and work. For me, it’s been an uncomfortable but essential experience. Can you tell us more about the process of hitting and going through these turning points?

A few years prior to ‘The 2nd Seven Years’ exhibition, I had been in and out of Malaysia on artist residencies in other countries. I was eager to show what I learned ‘out there’ and what I learned about myself to a Malaysian audience. In order to do that, I had me to reassess my work.

The first seven years of my ‘professional’ life (1996 – 2002) was spent mucking around, trying to find myself and trying to convince people to take me seriously. ‘The 2nd Seven Years’ (2003- 2009) exhibition was a summary of what were important themes and strategies in my work.

It was nice to put out that show, because it sort of announced that this is what I have been doing so far and this where my future work will come from.

The Spirit Leaves The Body, 1997, Lino Ink on Rice Paper (Monoprint)

Drawing seems central to your art – whether it’s monoprints, sewing or painting. What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking about starting to draw, but feels like they aren’t able to?

When one thinks about drawing, one automatically thinks about it being on a piece of paper, a 2-dimensional world. This 2D world is what is interesting about drawing (and painting). 2D does not exist in reality but our mind allows us to believe that dots, lines and planes arranged in particular ways on a flat surface could bring us to another reality. That’s the magic of drawing and painting.

However, painting (and also drawing) has been getting a lot bad press from the art world. Those who only paint are considered old-fashioned or ‘commercial’ and those who only draw are amateurs (unless you are a street artist). Artist now are required to be articulate in other ways like making a bold statement and make artworks that engage with technology, be inclusive of different communities, care about the environment, socially active, etc.

Somehow, in all this confusion, the magic of creating a window into another reality is lost. Drawing is most basic visual art form, when confused, go back to basics and continue from there.

Quilt of The Dead, 2002 – Ongoing, Collaborative work about memory using embroidery, 224cm x 224cm

Like many artists, you’ve used very interesting and creative research methods when making your work. Could you briefly tell us about one or two processes you used to approach a subject or a material in order to execute your idea?

They all start as urges and questions. What is that? Why does this interest me? What do I want to say? How do I convey that? How will it evolve as I work on this further? How will this change me?

‘Quilt of the Dead’ started as a curiousity about the obituary photos in newspapers and a personal memory about the death of my grandmother. I found embroidery to be the perfect medium for this work because embroidery takes time and patience (perhaps love too) to make and also it’s symbolism to the cycle of life and death in many cultures. Quilt of the Dead later evolved into embroidery performances and workshops that engage people to discuss about death and what that means to the living.

‘The World is Flat’ started as nostalgia for my stamp collection and childhood days, which I created collages made entirely out of stamps to convey the era of ‘official information’ of colonialism and the coming of a new era of ‘democratic information’ of the internet.

When I start making a series of work, l start when it is still ‘half-baked’ because I like the work to evolve organically, over a long period time and flexible enough for me to make many adjustments along the way. I could never make a work if I can already predict the result. For me the process is important.

Queen E’s Private Moment (When Will the Bubbles Burst?), 2011, Postage Stamps and Adhesive (Collage), 30cm x 21.5cm

I’ve been thinking a lot about how art relates to the world, both as ‘industry’ (i.e. art world, art market, etc) and simply as field that involves self-expression and making things. What does ‘independence’ mean to you, in art and in life?

One doesn’t become independent by being an artist. True, you are independent from a lot of society’s expectations, but you are not independent from your calling, which demands all your life’s dedication to it, but that’s not your question.

To continue as an artist, I separate making artwork, art career and money as three distinct categories that overlap sometimes. Making artwork is always the priority, because that’s what I do, who I am.

Simply put, the art market is for selling art. Just because the art market has become a humongous industry that involves influential artists, curators and institutions doesn’t mean that the objective has changed, it’s just that the business of selling art has become more sophisticated. Therefore, artists who need to survive by selling their work have to be more sophisticated as well, while being aware that that is just one aspect of their artistic self.

Interestingly, we (as in the human civilization) have evolved to a point where we are now heavily dependent on each other while also highly individualistic …or maybe it’s because we are highly dependent on each other that we HAVE to be individualistic. Being an individual means living differently from others, but we now lack resources to be self-sustaining, so we go to shops that cater to our individuality, you need money to be an individual, the more money you spend, the more individuality you get. Buying (expensive) art seems to be one way of announcing your individuality.

The World Is Flat, 2010, Postage Stamps and Adhesive (Collage), 84cm x 134cm

Something has been bugging me for a long time about the art profession in Malaysia: the fact that galleries and collectors often take months (sometimes years!) to pay artists for works that have been sold and delivered. Has this happened to you? What do you think is the cause and how can we improve this situation?

Yes, it has happened to me also. But I think that is a problem with many professions in Malaysia. Before I became I full-time artist, I worked in a number of freelance jobs, like painting murals and what not. Sometimes you get paid promptly, sometimes you get paid late, and sometimes only partially. The problem is there are no union bodies that look after the interest of their workers. There’s no union for mural painters, and there’s no union for artists. How do we improve on this situation? I don’t know, but it will be the same answer as how to reduce crime rate, how to improve public transportation, how to provide better education.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on my next series of stamp collages. After my last series, ‘The World is Flat’, I felt there are still more things to say.

Thanks Yoong Chia.

Everyone, please check out Yoong Chia’s website to see more of his works. Hope you’re enjoying Fertilizer Fridays. Be sure to read last week’s interview with Liew Kwai Fei!

Two portraits from Quilt of the Dead. Yoong Chia embroidered these based on photographs of my own grandparents who have passed on. Find out more about this on-going project here.

First, a plug! Zedeck is reading some stories from his epic book-in-making this Saturday, 27 Oct at Seksan’s. Come witness this pre-birth. More info here.

(Btw, if you don’t know, Zedeck is my non-husband and fellow inhabitant of leaky magical house in Port Dickson. Oh, he is a writer. Rather a good one, I think.)

Now, a story for you. I’ll keep the words short, and let the photos tell it.

In 2005, I had my first solo exhibition, Boats & Bridges. Back then, Reka Art Space was a great little gallery in Kelana Jaya. It was run by Sek Thim, who was very supportive but tough-minded. He was the kind of mentor I needed at the time. I had just come back from overseas and was a bundle of nervous energy. People who spend a long time away have this thing called ‘returner-angst’. I had alot of that.

Department of embarrassing and devastating memories: the night before my exhibition opened, I found out the person I had been hopelessly in love with in Australia had found someone else. I was a wreck. Halfway through discussing some exhibition detail, I started blubbing. It wasn’t pretty crying either, where perfect tears creep slowly down your face. It was horrible, snot-everywhere sobbing. Sek Thim packed me off home and reassured me everything would be ok.

Opening night was a success. Many people came. All the works sold out. I got happy-sad drunk and cried to sleep when I reached home.

I always associate my pride and joy in that first exhibition with the memory of gut-wrenching desperate sorrow. They kind of balance each other on a scale in my mind.

The high of the high is measured by the depth of the low. This is how it is.

So much for keeping the words short. Sorry.

For the exhibition, I’d made these weird shapes by pouring plaster-of-paris into plastic bags, and then peeling the bag off once the plaster had hardened. They were so cute! They were like little animals, little grey THINGS made from gravity and weight.

After the exhibition, I had an overwhelming feeling of not wanting to hold on to the THINGS. I thought it would be nice to distribute the THINGS all over the city. My friend Nazim (an excellent photographer and filmmaker) agreed to come along on this art littering/adventure and take pictures.

So that’s what we did at some ungodly hour of the morning. We dropped the THINGS at roadsides, at my old secondary school, a shopping mall, a carpark, the National Art Gallery (gotta get in there somehow). We put some in Dataran Merdeka, where homeless people were sleeping under the Malaysian flag. The last stop was Reka. It was dawn. I left a big grey THING there for Sek Thim as a tribute to what he had helped me start.

Nazim brought two cameras. He shot mostly on the digital, but also handed me a roll of 35mm film at the end, which I forgot all about.

Last week, I found it lying at the bottom of a box. These photos were on the roll.

Seeing them is like drinking a fine, aged wine. Memories, colours, even certain smells, come washing over me in a strangely potent combination. I love how age has caused these ‘stretch marks’ over the images, like on a woman’s hips (well, MY hips, anyway).

My iphone does so many things. But it can’t do this.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we shot a roll of film every year and promised only to develop them at a certain point in the future? I imagine rows and rows of them sitting in a cupboard somewhere, waiting.

But in the meantime, we would have to make sure there was someone around to process them. There could be an instruction scroll, handed down from generation to generation. It would be like… that boy dude in Terminator. THE ROLLS. OF FILM. HELD HER DESTINITY.

*dun dun DUNNN*

I wonder if anyone found the THINGS and took them home?

P.S. – Looking to develop film in Malaysia? Someone has compiled a good list here. I processed mine at Fotosun, SS2 (they will scan the negatives and put them on a CD for RM12). I’m printing some of these out for an exhibition next month. Hands down the best place for professional, archival quality photographic prints is Photomedia in SS2.

20/11/2012 UPDATE – Fei just emailed to tell me his next solo exhibition opens on 7 Nov 2012, at Valentine Willie Fine Art, KL. Artist Talk moderated by Yap Sau Bin on 17 Nov, 4PM. It’s art ‘For the Refined and For the Masses’ – which group do YOU fall into, dear reader?

Hello, dear readers! I’m excited to share a new series on this blog – Fertilizer Fridays!

These interviews with artist friends are about honest, casual conversation, sharing ideas + busting myths about being an artist/making art.

First up is Liew Kwai Fei. We met while working as gallery assistants. I wrote the introduction to his 2008 exhibition ‘The Rhythm of Doing’, and have a set of his minimalist, geometric paintings hanging in my bedroom.

Here he answers my questions in his characteristically poetic, sharp and sardonic way.

Fei standing in front of a recent painting. Photo by Minstrel Kuik.

Just like everyone else, artists have good days and bad days. Could you describe what your working day is like, a good one and a bad one?

a) GOOD – Bad
b) BAD – Good

Life is so difficult, and humans are so fragile. Good or bad doesn’t matter, being able to work in the studio already means a grateful day.

You studied painting at Malaysian Institute of Art. What was the most important thing you learnt there?

Have you met anyone else in the Malaysia contemporary art scene who is from an ink painting educated background?

Like you, I had a formal art education (sculpture at Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne). Art school gave me artistic direction, but I’ve found that I needed to ‘unlearn’ alot in order to find my real creative voice. What are some of the things art education can’t give you?

Bravo! I think you are the first person to put Malaysian Institute of Art and Victorian College of the Arts on the same level. To me, a major in Ink Painting in 3 years diploma course at MIA is hardly to be recognized as formal art education.

Old folk used to say : “授人以鱼不如授人以渔”

(English translation: It is always better to teach a hungry person to fish than to give him some fish.)

Now we can say: The master teaches the young man how to fish. But he can’t guarantee if there are still any fish left in the river.

4 Ekor 仙人指路, 2012, Acrylic on canvas, 208 x 198 cm

About education levels – I have doubts that Victorian College of the Arts was better education than MIA, it was just much more expensive! I think that raises a reality we seldom talk about honestly in Malaysia: the question about unequal hierarchy of information, related to social class and race.

Does certain information (e.g. overseas education vs. local) have higher value in terms of access to opportunities and power? Does certain information (e.g. local knowledge, vernacular language knowledge) have higher value in terms of access to local communities and politics (also power)?

This occupies my mind alot. I get valuable insights from your artwork about this. When I see the many little parts of your paintings that you arrange differently in space, it’s like breaking down systems of meaning and remaking new ones. Can you give your thoughts?

Let’s be honest, Malaysia is run by a bureaucratic, capitalist and racist government. If both of us can enroll in UiTM to study art like our Malay artist friends, why should we have to spend lots more money to study in private colleges locally or overseas? (Our parents’ tax money pays for UiTM as well) But can we?

After talking about the dark side of what’s happening in our country, it totally destroys the mood to talk about my art work. No wonder not many people in the art scene are pleased to honestly and openly discuss this – it’s really not a modern bourgeois lifestyle art topic.

Orang Murah Barang Mahal 贱人贵物, 2012, Acrylic on canvas

Looking at your work over the years, there’s many different approaches. I love and highly respect artists who change and experiment, not just their ‘style’, but their whole way of looking, thinking and making. My own work is ‘all-kinds of things at once’! Sometimes I worry about seeming inconsistent and unfocused, because I don’t have a ‘strong brand’. Do you have the same worries?

Everyday our mind and body will not be the same as before: we are getting old, dying. There is some peacefulness – as we experience more, worries get less. But then comes the urgency to make something true to yourself.

But who is yourself? What you want to do? Artists live in an environment, art doesn’t come from pure vanity. The world is far beyond the control of the artist, so she needs to respond to this. The more she feels deep and understands better, the higher the chances of making good art.

You’ve been on some artist residencies, locally and abroad. Can you explain what an ‘art residency’ is to someone who hasn’t heard the term before?

A high class culture foreign worker business/research/holiday trip. It’s a global phenomenon.

A work from solo exhibition Color, Shape, Quantity, Scale, 2010, Acrylic on paper, Five pieces: 8.5 x 129 cm

On paper, a residency sounds like the ultimate opportunity. But I know from experience there can be down-sides. Artists often don’t feel comfortable talking about this because it makes us sound ungrateful. What are some aspects of residencies that could change in order to be more fruitful for an artist like yourself?

1) If you know the hidden agenda beforehand, then please think twice. If not, then happy-go-lucky or lucky to be unlucky.

2) It’s all about transparency and respect, which is the responsibility of both parties, the artist and the organizer

3) The most terrible organizer is the one with a ‘mercy’ attitude towards artists.

4) The artist should always remember there are no free lunches. You need to pay for everything you get. Maybe not in currency, but there are hidden costs. ‘Free’ is the most expensive price to pay.

A work from solo exhibition Color, Shape, Quantity, Scale, 2010, Acrylic on paper, 9 pieces: dimensions variable

A basic art business deal involves two or three parties. There are many factors why the buyer or middleman delays payment for what is bought. Some of this can be fixed by business law, but the major part is about trust – being responsible and caring about others in the deal.

I’ve worked in galleries for years, and I have yet to meet any gallerist doing business with good ethics or ‘full-time’ art collectors who are humble and open minded. How do improve? Sometimes a cheeky smiling face with sexy (or macho) body will do better :p

For further reading about the art economy, check out Hans Abbing’s book.

A work from solo exhibition Color, Shape, Quantity, Scale, 2010, Acrylic on paper, 12 pieces: 49 x 39 cm each

What’s next for you?

with Metta:
Listen to the whisper of my destiny.
Reading more kampung stories.
Seeing the shadow in the darkness.
Dancing with my dear lady.

and physically:
I need to learn how to be cheeky and build up my skinny body or else next year will still be hard. Haha!

Thanks, Fei.

Everyone, if you liked this fertilizer and want more, see you next Friday!

Fei recreated his whole studio as part of the exhibition Color, Shape, Quantity, Scale in 2010.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to finish a proposal for my epic art/multimedia/videogame/genre-busting/enterprise project.

As usual, it’s eating up more time and sweat than I thought it would. First steps always do. They’re the litmus test. If you can’t get past this stage, how are you going to hold up to the rest of the journey?

Halfway through, in a one of those fits of despair-clarity (desclarity? clarpairity?) I tweeted: Proposal writing is like pushing a dream through the sieve of reality.

No matter what project you’re trying to birth, this is one of the most difficult things to do. It’s also one of the most important.

I’ve written probably more than a dozen proposals – for myself and others. Hanim used to call me ulat proposal or the proposal worm. I like that. A worm is the right thing emulate. You’re in the darkness, turning the soil, working hard, trying to prepare the ground where (hopefully) your 250ft Tualang tree is going to grow.

Be a worm, my comrades!

I’ve realized that the ones closest to your heart are the hardest to write. This year is the first time in a long, long while that I’ve written proposals for myself, not as an application for a grant, residency or external opportunity of some kind. There’s no deadline, except the passing of the days, the realization that… FUCK, is it October already?… the end of the year is coming.

I’ve talked a lot about this epic project to friends – how it’s going to be a total shift, what it’s going to take, the outfit I plan to wear at the launch. But writing it down sets it in stone. No turning back. It becomes real, to you.

So real that, as I was scheduling the work plan and budget, my heart started pounding uncontrollably. ‘Chill the fuck out’, I ordered my brain. ‘It’s art, not saving lives.’

The enormity of the task felt overwhelming, and also slightly ridiculous. Was it right to dedicate so much effort to realizing a personal vision? Did it not smell a little of hubris? Selfishness? I saw a wave coming towards me, completely swallowing up my life for months, perhaps even years. Shouldn’t I use this life towards a greater good? Art… pffft.

These are the kind of powerfully stupid thoughts that kill worthy dreams before they even start. Where do they come from? I cringe as I write them down. Do you get them?

I can’t really answer whether art is more important than say, education or saving the environment or bringing down a corrupt government. But I do know this: many best efforts go awry, and many good intentions do harm. So how? I don’t know. I’ve chosen the Taoist/anarchist route: do what only you can do. What no one else can do. Keep to that, and maybe I’ll do less wrong. Who knows, perhaps I’ll even do some good in the bargain.

Incidentally, that last paragraph is basically what the Epic Project (that what I’ll call it from now on, until I’m prepared to reveal the proper title) is all about.

Fucking hell. I figured it out. I was dead stuck at the ‘Project Context and Significance’ part of the proposal. That’s it. Taoism. Anarchism. Doing only what you can do.

God, I love blogging. Thank you, imaginary readers. You help me in unimaginable ways.

Now back to proposal writing.

Why is it difficult? Because it’s a start.

Why is it important? So that you can see what you need to finish.

I started to calm down as I plowed through the business plan and working schedule. I broke it down into parts, and then into smaller parts. I cut out anything that wasn’t absolutely essential, then thought hard about what I could realistically accomplish, and gave myself more time. I took a deep breath and I thought…

I can do this. I think.

Pics: I was in Sabah recently and went on a canopy walk amongst Tualang trees that were as hard as rock, and hundreds of years old. I felt like a little seed invited to a party by living ancients. It was cool.

A very long P.S. –

From a professional artist point of view, writing clear and effective proposals is a skill well worth developing. It takes practice, but it can be done. The question is, do you want to do it, and do you need to?

Many artists have difficulty describing their work in words. It feels unnatural, something of a ‘mistranslation’ when you want your art to speak for itself. If you want to pursue the path of getting gallery exhibitions, grants, funding or residencies, you need to write good proposals. This is because the intersections of art, commerce and social-economic development are getting more complicated and sophisticated. It’s a bureaucratic jungle. If artists want to grow there, they have to justify their work in terms of objectives, goals and wider social significance.

There are choices, other paths to take. That’s not the only way to be an artist. You can focus on engaging your audience the way YOU want to, by talking about your art the way YOU want to, and so gain more autonomy through self-representation. That’s what I’m trying to do with this blog.

However! Whether it’s for a selection committee or for personal use, writing a proposal is a helpful tool (whatever the ‘project’, e.g. running a marathon, writing a cookbook, starting a recycling campaign, planning an urban garden, etc). It kicks the logical, analytical, left-brain part of yourself into gear. It sends a clear signal to your central system: no kidding around. I. AM. Doing. This. Because this is how I’m going to do it.

So, try it out. There are some good tips out there on the interweb.

I’m thinking of doing a practical guide on How To Write a Project Proposal. I mean, a proper one, with templates and real instructions. Drop me an email or a comment if you think that’s a good idea.

Seriously, there’s a way to do it. I’m going to show you how.

This is not a hidden metaphor. I am not trying to be profound.

I’m just going to show you how to straighten a goddamn muthafuckkin bent wire. So that in the off-chance someone you need to impress goes: ‘I need this wire straightened out, how?’, you can take charge. You can say: ‘Like this.’ And proceed to impress the pants off said person.

If you’re wondering, I needed to do this for my artwork Portable Sensors. It’s a set of interactive buzzwires based on statistics about banned books in Malaysia.

The work is currently touring in Indonesia, as part of the exhibition Kembara Jiwa (The Travelling Soul). Nur Hanim Khairuddin (the curator and all-round art superwoman) sent me some pictures of people playing with the work:

People touching my art. This makes me so happy.

Let’s get to it!

STEP 1: You’ll need a power drill, pliers/wire cutters, and of course, some bent wire.

STEP 2: Find somewhere secure and wrap one end of the wire around it. It needs to be firmly attached to something, preferably part of a building structure. A doorknob or towel rung on a shut door would work. I’m using this little hook at my front entrance. You can see the remainders of many past bent wires.

STEP 3: Open up the chuck of the drill and put the other end of the bent wire in there. Tighten firmly. Firm enough so that when you pull on it, the wire stays in.

STEP 4: Now stand-up, stand back, grip your drill firmly. Maintain a gentle pulling tension on the drill towards yourself as you turn the drill on. The wire will twist around itself. Continue holding the tension and pressing the drill button until it straightens out completely. Don’t over-straighten! The wire’s structural strength will be compromised and it may snap. You’ll find that the wire will also get a bit warm as it turns.

Cut the wire off and YOU’RE DONE.

So straight.

You can bend this totally straight wire into lovely shapes. Just like I did. Well my shapes are graphs about Malaysian censorship. You, you can do whatever gets you happy. Now, go make something.

You’re welcome!

Love,
Sharon

P.S. Here are some rejected Portable Sensors prototypes. It’s bonsai wire. Turns out the coating of black paint makes it unable to conduct electricity. That’s Zedeck’s finger doing photo-bombing. He said the wires reminded him of an album cover. Any idea which?

This is a series of weekly blog tutorials about how to do various things, from the practical to the esoteric. Go here to see past How Tos.

Over the weekend, I played around on Pinterest.

I uploaded all the photos of house gates I’ve been taking over the past few months.

I still don’t know exactly why I’ve been collecting gates. They’ve been sitting in my phone, accumulating digital dust.

My favorite one. What a beauty. Petaling Jaya.

Assembling them on Pinterest has been surprisingly useful. I can see a visual idea developing. Will it turn out to be sweet song or thundering fart?

So much of art is waiting, stirring the pot.

Stir, stir, stir.

I think gates would make good graffiti, especially over existing graffiti.

A mural of gates. A tribute to all the places we can’t go, all the things we keep locked up and protected, all the people we keep out.

Kuala Lumpur

I like using Pinterest as a tool to document, observe and understand. I’m not so hot on the marketing and social part.

Warning! If you’re just grazing around the interweb, looking for random grass to chew, Pinterest has the time-suck potential of a small blackhole. In other words, if you have work or life needs doing, APPROACH WITH CAUTION.

There’s a lot of talk about Pinterest monetizing and leveraging off the collective creative soup out there on the internet… turning it into a finte resource like privatized water, or bottled oxygen.

Some very good links here and here, about Pinterest’s ethical grey areas, and the importance of creating a culture of proper attribution on the internet.

Room to let. They want a Chinese Female only.

Let’s do this!

Ready?

It should take about an hour. You can wear this all weekend and soak in its glory.

STEP 1: Gather the ingredients

You’ll need:

– Safety pins
– Scissors & glue gun
– Cheap wire headband
– Thin ribbon in as many colours as you like
– Flowers*

*I’m using those from my #bungaBERSIH dress, which already have safety pins glued on. You can use any kind of fake flower (handmade or store bought) and hot glue a safety pin to the back.

STEP 2: Cut a ribbon 3 times the length of the headband

STEP 3: Tie ribbon to one end of the headband and start wrapping around it, going in between the teeth. Leave a nice length at your first knot.

STEP 4: This is what it’ll look like when you’re done. Now you’ve got a nice base to pin the flowers on.

STEP 5: Line up the flowers so you’ll know in which order you want them to be along the headband. Fire up your glue gun and glue a safety pin to the back of each flower (be sure to glue the non-moveable part of the pin).

STEP 6: Pin the flowers to the ribbon base. You can also sew the flowers on, but it takes longer. Also, with safety pins you can change the flowers when you feel like it! Not to mention take them off your head and pin them onto other people.

Flowers all pinned down:

STEP 7: Tie some short lengths of ribbon randomly between the flowers. This will make it look pretty.

STEP 8: Tie longer lengths of ribbon close to the first tooth of each side, so they can flutter around in the wind.

YOU’RE DONE!

Enjoy!

Read more about #bungaBERSIH in the last blogpost and on my website.

Tell me if you make this! I wanna see.

For the makeup geeks: Neon yellow eyeshadow from Sleek Acid palette under the eyes and all the way up and down the temples. Line the bottom waterline with white liner (Revlon Matte Luxurious Kohl in Pure White #004). Sheer purple lipstick (Rimmel Moisture Renew in Electric Plum).

Hello dear readers, I spent the weekend trying to write this blog so it could go up yesterday.

You see, I had A PLAN.

Mondays I would post updates from the frontlines of Making Art Happen – all the stuff that goes on in my head and heart. I would call it Makenarten Mondays.

Wednesdays I would post geeky How Tos – practical, technical, mildly tutorial type things, which would also veer into strange territory like the last post.

Fridays I have a surprise brewing, which is not ready yet. I promise it is cool, and importantly, contains things other than ME.

But, as you cannot fail to notice, it is already Tuesday. I am late. Fuck. Beautiful plan is no longer pretty and perfect. So maybe instead of doing what I always do, which is makenplannen, I’m going to try to makenhappen this first and see where it goes.

Ok? Ok.

Warning: this is going to be long and messy.

I’ve realized that blogging works best the closer it is to now. Fresh dung is golden, stored up things get stale and heavy. But I want to blog about #bungaBERSIH and Bersih3.0.

It’s been months since the momentous day of the street rally. I finally feel like I can talk about it. There were a lot of voices and opinions in the lead up to 28 April – how people felt, how they didn’t feel, analyses, reflection, criticism, resistance. It just went on and on, like a bursting river of pent-up emotion. It was fucking elemental.

I’ll be honest, part of me wanted to hide and drop out. Not because I was above it all, but because I couldn’t fucking hear myself think or feel. I can’t have been the only one. (Introverts of Malaysia, you feelin’ me?)

This is where art saves me. It gives me something to do. It can be (I emphasize CAN be) an expression of the self that doesn’t try to win over or control others.

There were calls for creative people to ‘use our art for a good cause.’

I didn’t know how to deal with that. Here’s the thing. I’m not neutral politically. I’m comfortable with politics – it’s part of living as a citizen in the world. I’ve also been on the far end of this ‘using art’ spectrum, having spent a brief stint making actual political propaganda. It was a good experience. I got paid for it. I might do it again, if the spirit moves me.

But something about the idea of ‘using’ art fills me with dread. I think it’s because if you believe there’s ‘useful’ art, then you also believe there’s ‘useless’ art. I can’t buy into that. I don’t accept that art of higher moral standing is more valuable, and I’m wary of anyone who says it is.

Back in 2011, I designed some posters supporting Bersih2.0. I felt like I was serving a greater cause. But deep down I knew I had done it for myself (as with, ultimately, all my art making) – maybe for attention, to feel righteous, to be somehow visible during this historical moment. That doesn’t mean I’m not proud and glad that these posters exist in the world.

There is a line. And it’s NOT about not crossing it, because to understand anything, you need to go everywhere. It’s about keeping track, making sure it’s there. What is this line? I don’t know. But I think – and this is a theory – it lies in this question and how honestly you can answer: why are you doing this?

For Bersih3.0, I knew I wanted to make a costume of some kind.

When I was in Spain last year, I saw someone dressed up as a Mystic from The Dark Crystal in the Puerta del Sol. I dropped a coin into his/her tin and the Mystic did a little dance for me. I kissed it on the nose and went on my way. It was a beautiful moment that made me indescribably happy. My mom took a video. If I find it, I’ll post it up.

I decided to make a yellow dress covered in bunga (flowers) to give away.

On the eve of the rally, a few of us stayed over at Shahril Nizam’s place in the heart of KL. (Shahril is one of my favorite people, and an amazing artist) We spent the day sewing and pinning hundreds of ribbon flowers to the dress.

Shahril’s kitchen table on 27 April. The hot glue flowed and so did the bubble tea:

28 April came. I watched the dawn from Shahril’s window:

Bersih3.0 was one the best days of my life – for a few hours, all the invisible walls between art, audience, and power dissolved. People loved the dress, it seemed to make them happy and that made me happy. So much love, no explanations needed. I remember thinking: how do I make art be like this, always?

I kept putting off the moment of giving out the flowers because I wanted to ride the high… and then, suddenly, the tear gas hit. It was chaos. When rumours of violence started trickling in via twitter, we left the scene. The flowers stayed on the dress. I took it home and hung it on my studio wall to remind me of that incredible day.

Now, enter part two. (Sorry, I told you this was going to be long. Stay with me, ok?)

A few months later, the editor at Esquire Malaysia emailed asking if I’d be part of their Media Art Project: interview, photo shoot, exhibitions in three different venues, and feature in their Artsy Fartsy August issue.

I turned them down. I even drew a little chart weighing the pros and cons (I am a total dork. I really am) and concluded that I needed to be getting on with the epic art project I have planned for 2013.

But in a fit of perversity, I said I’d do it if they featured the yellow Bersih dress. To my surprise, it was a yes. They’re a game old bunch, over at Esquire. See, they even let me hold a bag of salt (salt neutralizes tear gas) in the photo shoot:

I made A LOT more flowers for the dress, and numbered each one by hand. All 345 of them. I decided to be absent for the exhibitions. Partly because I didn’t want to leave Port Dickson, partly as an experiment in making art happen remotely, from a distance. I prepared an information board that told people to ‘liberate’ a flower, and to email/tweet me which number they got, using the tag #bungaBERSIH.

I was looking forward to the same rush of interacting with strangers that I got at Bersih3.0, only this time, virtually.

A few good friends (bless their souls) emailed and tweeted me their flowers. The wonderful Esquire intern (@ShawalRas) sent me sweet messages about how everyone loved the dress. No one outside my familiar circle got back to me.

By the night of the second exhibition, the silence from my inbox was deafening. I think what made it worse was that I wasn’t there in person to see how people were engaging with the dress. On my end, it felt like a total failure. I was crushed.

The next day, I got an email from someone I didn’t know. It was a single line:

‘Hey, nice show. I got flower #_____.’

One person.

That one email made me cry. I realized that when people take your art, it’s actually a gift. And if they ever let you know how it made them feel, that stuff is priceless beyond anything. That lone email was as important as to me as the reactions of the huge crowd at Bersih.

One person. That’s all we’ll ever be.

It’s everything!

P.S. If you’d like to liberate a flower, write to me at sharon@mail.sharonchin.com. Tell me your address and I’ll send you one (yes, through the post office, in the real world), wherever you are.

P.P.S. Check out the #bungaBERSIH Liberators List here.

Sharon Chin

Artist Sharon Chin's Site

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