Bad Girls 2019

Some drawings I made for International Women’s Day.

Free to download, share, print, use for non-commercial purposes ONLY.

International Women’s Day March on SAT, 9 March 2019.

Meeting points:

  • 8AM, Jesselton Point, Kota Kinabalu
  • 10AM, SOGO, Kuala Lumpur

More info: https://womensmarchmy.wordpress.com

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1) *CLICK HERE* to download hi-resolution (9.4 MB)

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2) *CLICK HERE* to download hi-resolution (11.4 MB)

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3) *CLICK HERE* to download hi-resolution (7.2 MB)

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4) *CLICK HERE* to download hi-resolution (11.7 MB)

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5) *CLICK HERE* to download hi-resolution (9.2 MB)

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6) *CLICK HERE* to download hi-resolution (10.4 MB)

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7) *CLICK HERE* to download hi-resolution (6 MB)

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Trouble girls: Art for ‘Lagi Senang Jaga Sekandang Lembu’

Early in the year, my friend Amanda Nell Eu asked if I wanted to work on her short film. She sent me her script, about the friendship between two teenage girls, set in a Malay kampung. One of them turns into a Pontianak.

Some time ago I’d randomly drawn two characters. I didn’t know who they were, or where they came from, and I still don’t. I gathered they were friends, girls who were in trouble, and caused trouble. In any case, I dumped them in the ‘art for reasons unknown’ folder (an actual folder in my studio, and also, in my head) and forgot about them.

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They came crawling out again this year, when my friend Wolf wanted art for his new album. He ended up using other drawings of mine, on account of them being naked ladies, and the album being for all ages. This is them making some dramatic escape to the tune of ‘I Love the Law’, my favorite song on the album.

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So they were very alive to me when I became Amanda’s unlikely art director. Seeds of them when into Fatin and Rahmah, Amanda’s two characters. Despite me not knowing the first thing about film-making, AND being a total chicken-shit horror-phobe, Amanda and I worked well together. We have an appreciation for the trouble in girls. Looking at most of my work that sees the light of day, you wouldn’t call it dark, but with Amanda, I found somewhere to put the darkness.

These were my first drawings of Fatin and Rahmah.

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Growing up, I didn’t see many girl-girl partnerships depicted in the culture around me. As an adult, I still don’t. It’s always two guys going off and having adventures: Frodo and Sam, Holmes and Watson, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.  When I told Zedeck this, he wrote a series of stories about ‘The Adventures of Sandy and Aina’, loosely based on me and my best friend, some of which ended up published in KL Noir: BLUE, a crime anthology.

Here’s Fatin and Rahmah hanging out in the jungle after school. This was my favorite scene in the film. I got obsessed about the snacks they were eating, and insisted on having this PARTICULAR brand of neon pink cotton candy that you can only find in petrol stations. Also, a PARTICULAR brand of bootleg cigarettes, which my art team went to great lengths to find. By the way, if you’re looking for a production design team in Malaysia, MovArt are amazing, wonderful, the best.

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Not coincidentally, the colour palette of the film was pink and green.

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I imagined Amanda’s Pontianak as wearing a pink satin pajamas set, with long claws and long hair. Amanda wanted a monster who was also a very human girl. Fatin was all hair, all body – an animal comfortable in the world, and at the same time, a girl at war with it.

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For a few months I lived with photo reference of bruises, bite marks, severed hands, and a condition called trichotillomania, on my phone.

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THE CLAWS. All the better to rip your daddy’s guts out, and feast on them under banana trees, on the night of a full moon!

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Before working on this film I’d never seen a story taken apart and put back together so often and in so many ways. It’s amazing that stories can go through this brutal process and come out resembling anything like an edible (sometimes delicious, and even transcendent) sausage.

It’s a constant back and forth between zooming out to see the whole sausage, like this first thumbnail breakdown of the wardrobe and set design for every scene… (I literally can’t remember how many subsequent breakdowns I did, for clothes, for props, for makeup, etc. etc.)

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…and filling in the tiniest details of the sausage, like this badge I designed for Rahmah’s school uniform.

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Oh I have left out so many steps and all the talented, ridiculously hard-working professionals involved in the making of this sausage (producer, cinematography, lighting, sound, continuity, editing, etc. etc.), to jump right to the end, where you wrap the finished sausage in nice packaging, i.e this poster I designed…

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…and hope the people who eat it enjoy it!

‘Lagi Senang Jaga Sekandang Lembu’ will be be screened on ASTRO sometime in 2017.

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Here, enjoy some production photos!

Fatin and Rahmah meet at the test shoot:

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Fatin in her tree:

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This cat wanted to be in the film real bad, and is probably in one of the scenes:

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Best art department team a newbie art director could ask for, taking a break at the famous ‘Boyfriend’ fruit shake stall in Broga:

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Ella Sandera and Timie Boy, best special effects and make-up team a newbie art director could ask for, working on a totally zonked out Fatin:

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Dinner taim:

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First draft of the poster, featuring Zedeck:

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Update (2 Jan 2017): Here are two extra pages from my sketchbook for this film. They reveal the sometimes crippling self-doubt that is nicer to keep hidden. I decided to include them because I think it may be useful for people to know that it is not easy to be a beginner again. As an artist, context – your body of work – is everything. In the film world, I had no context, and so experienced being someone whose work is unknown, unproven. It’s not a comfortable place to be! I’m grateful to Amanda, our producer Gan, and everyone who worked on this film for taking a chance on me. With some work, some nerve, some luck, and people you believe in, who believe in you – you can forge from the self-doubt something worthwhile.

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Bad Daughter, or, Where I Got My Feminism

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My partner, that is, my lover and friend, my dear companion, the person I live with and have sex with, but am not married to, always tells me that I can’t keep projecting the power struggles I have with my family as a reflection of how power plays out on a national level.

I can’t help it. To become the woman I needed to be, or wanted to be  (I can’t tell the difference), I’ve had to be a bad daughter. Being a bad daughter has meant being more free, but also, perhaps, less loved, and certainly, less liked.

I was a ‘daddy’s girl’. If that sounds gross to me now, it’s because I used to revel in it, to be loved simply for being pleasing – for being a good daughter. My father and I used to drink whiskey and talk into the night. People praised us for having a great relationship.

My father was the cool one, the one to be with, who got things done. People respected him, and his decisions ruled our fates. My mother was the embarrassing, irrational, emotional person who cried, whose voice shook when she spoke in public. To be close to my father meant being closer to power. That’s where I got my power.

My feminism comes from the silence of my mother. I began to notice that my father doesn’t hear what she says. I notice that as she gets older, people literally do not SEE her. When I was out with both of them recently, people greeted my father and me, but not my mother!

And there isn’t enough time to tell you how often I have undermined my mother, refused to hear her, been embarrassed by her emotion or tears, her suddenly saying inappropriate things at awkward times. Just as I myself, and women I know, have been ignored, spoken over, undermined in meetings, or whatever, while colleagues, self-avowed progressives, have stayed silent, only to come to me afterwards, telling me they were sorry about what happened and had my back the whole time. And they(we) call them(our)selves feminists? Motherfuckers.

Even though I’m trying now, I feel as though I don’t have enough time left in my life to hear all the things that my mother has yet to say.

I don’t know how and when I started to notice this. I don’t know when I started to be a bad daughter, to hear my mother, and insist on her being heard, to combat my father but not love him any less, and to unwind this love from the power that he holds, and feels entitled to.

Men, I notice, suffer too. I have read that older, straight men especially, are chronically under-touched – they lack platonic skin-to-skin contact, which releases Oxytocin in the brain, important in combating depression and stress. When I found out my father was seriously ill, I remember feeling a strange pang of loss and fear, not for him, but for myself, as if his diminishment was my own. It made me wonder whether we allow the men in our lives to be weak or vulnerable, to cry? Or are we ashamed of them? Once, when my father broke down at a public event after hearing some distressing news, I remember my mother, scandalized, saying to him: ‘Don’t do this to me now’. And I have had strong, independent, women friends say to me: ‘I make decisions all day at work, when I come home, I want a man who takes charge.’

I grew up reading. My mother would leave me with a stack of books in her office for hours, while she taught classes at the university. Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books somehow got into my bones. They made my soul, which books do when you’re young. Much later, when I was college, she continued the Earthsea series with Tehanu, which has been called (mostly unflatteringly) a revisionist, feminist fantasy:

‘“If women had power, what would men be but women who can’t bear children? And what would women be but men who can?”

“Hah!” went Tenar; and presently, with some cunning, she said, “Haven’t there been queens? Weren’t they women of power?”

“A queen’s only a she-king,” said Ged.

She snorted.

“I mean, men give her power. They let her use their power. But it isn’t hers, is it? It isn’t because she’s a woman that she’s powerful, but despite it.

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“Why are men afraid of women?”

If your strength is only the other’s weakness, you live in fear,” Ged said.

“Yes; but women seem to fear their own strength, to be afraid of themselves.”

“Are they ever taught to trust themselves?” Ged asked, and as he spoke Therru came in on her work again. His eyes and Tenar’s met.

“No,” she said. “Trust is not what we’re taught.” She watched the child stack the wood in the box. “If power were trust,” she said. “I like that word. If it weren’t all these arrangements – one above the other – kings and masters and mages and owners – It all seems so unnecessary. Real power, real freedom, would lie in trust, not force.”

Is that when I started to notice things like my father and mother? To count, with almost pathological reflexivity, how many women there are included in any event, or on any committee? I can’t be sure.

My feminism has been an uncertain thing, a path in the darkness, burning my doubt like a candle to find the way. My mother led me to books, to Ursula’s books, which led me to feminism, which led me back to my mother’s silence and my father’s pain – a circular journey, leading out and back again, searching for ways to get out from under the power that holds things as they are. I have been led all my life, and I have followed, am still following, searching for the key and the door that leads to freedom.

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This is the essay version of a talk I gave at Performing Gender, a panel discussion held at Black Box, Publika on 11 April 2015.

About the photo – it’s identified on the internet as a wedding portrait from Budapest, circa 1920. I tried finding the source, but no luck. I first came across it in my Tumblr feed, via thenearsightedmonkey.

Dear Malaysian women’s magazine

Dear Malaysian women’s magazine,

First of all, thank you for nominating me to be in the running for the Great Women of Our Time Awards 2014. I’m honoured that you’ve noticed my work and consider it of value. Many Malaysian women read and enjoy your magazine, which makes me sincerely appreciate this recognition. Again, thank you.

But I must respectfully decline. For one thing, since I hit my 30s, I find I’ve lost that sensation of having all the time in the world, stretching out before me. This isn’t a fear of getting old, it’s a very welcome effect of no longer being 20. As they say, art is long, and life is very short. As an artist in Malaysia, I doubt I will ever amass much money or prestige of my own. Luckily, my privileged circumstances allow my family to support me financially, so that I can continue doing my work.  My time, that is, the time to do this work, is all I have to give the world.

Therefore I will not be able to attend the photoshoot and interview and gala dinner.

I wish you, your team, the judging panel, the 3 nominees in 6 categories and the eventual grand winners all the best. Personally, I wish women could be celebrated without competition, but those are not the times we live in. Your magazine must do as it can, and so must I.

Once again, thank you.

Yours sincerely,
Sharon

1782330_10151955955298753_447855174_oWith my mother. I get it all from her. Photo by Cindy Koh

A Portrait of Vivian Lee

In July last year, I drew a portrait of Alvivi.

Alvivi are Vivian Lee and Alvin Tan. I follow them online. It’s like following a meteor as it trolls brightly through the Internet, trailing controversy and naked pictures in its wake.

This time though, the stakes were different. It was Ramadan, the holy month. Alvivi uploaded a photo of themselves eating pork soup, wishing Muslims ‘happy breaking fast’, and included a HALAL logo in the corner.

The public outcry was intense. They were arrested, denied bail, sent to prison for 8 nights and charged with the Film Censorship Act, the Sedition Act and Section 298A of the Penal Code.

As is usual with controversies, especially ones online, and especially in Malaysia, you’re either for or against. I drew Alvivi’s portrait as an escape route, an attempt to look at them (and our reactions to them), differently. I wasn’t very successful. There is a limit to the insight you can gain when you only know your subjects through the Internet.

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People interacting with “Vivian Lee, Social Portrait” at the exhibition opening.

That portrait eventually led to me meeting Vivian in person. She saw it and friended me on Facebook. Months later, I sent her a message asking: ‘Can we hang out? I want to make art about you.’

I’m not sure if she found it flattering, or creepy. Possibly both. Anyway, she said yes.

Meeting Vivian for the first time was surreal. My brain kept recalibrating the online image I had in my head with the reality of the human being, both simpler and more complex, in front of me. I’ll be honest – I was inclined to be sympathetic from the outset, and had trouble keeping my projections in check.

My affinity for Vivian comes not just from being a woman, but one whose life, work and self-image are closely tied to the Internet. I met my first boyfriend in an IRC chatroom (back in the earlier days of the Internet) when I was 16. Almost 2 decades later, the Internet is allowing me to build an independent art career by connecting me directly to my audience. At the same time, my Facebook feed shows me ads for weight loss and vaginal tightening creams because its algorithms predict that’s what I’m mostly likely to buy.

Vivian is 10 years younger than I am. She was about 11 or 12 when she first encountered the Internet. She started chatting over MSN Messenger, and moved on to the proto social network site Friendster. When she joined Facebook, she was extremely self-conscious and cautious about posting there because her family and friends shared the same network. Her mother, a conservative single parent, would nag her based on her status updates.

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Photo by Nadia J Mahfix

Tumblr was different. The blogging and social media platform has relatively low usage amongst Malaysians. It was there that she and Alvin started their (now defunct) sex blog Sumptuous Erotica in 2012, which was followed by international fans and a handful of close friends. She spoke with sadness about no longer having the blog. She had lost a place on the Internet where she felt free to be, as she put it, ‘my true self’.

Vivian maintains she never wanted controversy or fame. She regrets that Alvin shared the link to their sex blog on forums like hardwarezone.sg, which led to it being picked up by Singaporean media. Whether he did so to connect with more like-minded people, or to boost the Alvivi signal online, is open to question. This sheds light on Alvin and Vivian’s relationship and the Alvivi ‘brand’ – while they may have differing approaches to fame and the Internet, they bear the outcomes of each other’s actions together.

Many accuse Alvivi of being low-rent attention seekers. But who’s really mining and exploiting our human attention spans? In today’s economy, ‘eyeball hours’ are the new raw minerals. Stock prices depend on views, likes and shares, while Youtube sensations leverage their millions of subscribers for lucrative partnerships with big brands. An indication of what Vivian does for web traffic: a photo posted to my Facebook page usually gets 200 – 600 views. A photo tagged with Vivian got 2,000. When The Star broke the story of Alvivi in Malaysia, it garnered record page views, and continued to feature them in print and online every day, for a week.

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Photo by Masjaliza Hamzah

In the press and their social media channels, Alvin’s voice dominates. Negative comments on their Youtube videos reveal a marked difference in the way people perceive him compared to Vivian. He’s ‘wasting his future’, while she’s ‘stupid for being used by an asshole’. She said that most of the ‘shameful’ and ‘slut’ comments were directed at her. Even though Alvin was derided for embarrassing his family, she was seen as ‘incurring the most loss’ because no one would want her as a wife. It seems that women can’t even be harlots on their own terms; they’re bad not because they’re bad, but because they’re unmarriageable.

When I asked Vivian what she had learned about race and religion in Malaysia since the Ramadan pork soup controversy, she could not answer. I’m not sure if it was because she didn’t understand my question, or because there was nothing she had learnt. I rephrased: ‘what do you think about race and religion in general?’ She expressed frankly that she likes the fact that she’s Chinese, and that there must be reasons why people don’t like different races, for example: because Chinese are greedy, Malays are lazy and Indians are violent.

She felt that people should be less sensitive about race and religion, and wondered ‘why make such a big deal out of it?’ On the one hand, she seemed to buy into racial stereotypes. On the other, she felt that race and religion were forms of social control, and saw no difference between being offended by racial or religious self-expression and being offended by sexual self-expression.

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Hello can you hear me? Photo by Maryann Tan

This is where my values differ from Vivian’s. Freedom of expression is a poor defense for holding and expressing racist views. Maintaining the right to individual self-expression, while expressing a group racial identity (e.g. Chinese eating pork soup) to address another group racial identity (e.g. Muslims fasting during the holy month), is hypocritical.

Vivian said if she had known that the consequences of posting the Ramadan picture were jail and criminal charges, she would not have done it. Not because it was hurtful or offensive, but because it was ‘not practical’. This is important. It tells us that criminalizing offense does nothing to impart understanding. It only enforces obedience based on fear. As long as we turn to repressive laws to manage our cultural differences, we will continue to live in fear.

Vivian’s racism does not diminish my affinity for her in other respects. Looking at her honestly enough to make a portrait that has a kernel of truth and meaning trains me to look at Malaysia the same way. The picture that emerges is complex: brave, ugly and challenging all at once. She is neither good nor bad, she is simply herself. Looking deeply into the individual, we may find a way to understand the whole.

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We are all Vivian. Photo by Maryann Tan

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Many thanks to Zedeck Siew, Danny Lim, Maryann Tan and Sunitha Janamohanan for editorial help on this essay.

The Good Malaysian Woman: Ethnicity. Religion. Politics is showing at Black Box, MAP Publika, from 18 – 25 May 2014.