This project was developed from a field trip in Sarawak, Malaysia, as part of the ephemera: Winston Oh Travelogue exhibition in 2022. Its development can be traced back to an encounter I had with a local Bidayuh-builder of longhouses who was during our engagement, sharing his knowledge about the built environment of the traditional longhouses in the local community. Accordingly, the construction of a longhouse begins with etching out a plan that distinguishes the bamboo flooring from its wooden parts. Underpinning this building tradition is a thought process for the reproduction of communities. The longhouses can be elongated to accommodate another family. It is designed to include everyone. Today, the traditional longhouse is a threatened typology, many of them have disappeared and they were mostly reconstructed in the cultural village for tourism. The local culture is slowly becoming effaced for the local community
Appropriating used-textiles found in the local market in Sarawak, I began to recompose them with used-fabrics of my own personal belongings. Working from the original sketch as etched out by the local Bidayuh builder, I sought to reclaim the idea of reproducing communities that was once so elementary to the people of the longhouses by piecing together quilted fabrics to form a larger tapestry, interpreting from the sparse linear flooring pattern found on the drawing. Similarly, the installation adopts a multi-perspectival approach. In allowing the piece to recline over the handrail, it decenters the viewer from seeing it in one fixed point of view and therefore breaking away with the traditional subject-object dichotomy, and this challenges our traditional hierarchical relationship to an object. In declining the visual mastery, the piece draws our attention to the working process that expresses my solidarity with the local community of people; it serves as a conduit to think about the locals’ aspirations for modernization on the one hand and the prolongation of local knowledge on the other.
Diary excerpts, 2022
Installation view: used & new textiles, cotton batting, sewing thread, single-channel HD video installation on TV panel, b&w and sound, 2022
Curator: Adeline Kueh. Special thanks: Dr Winston Oh, Adeline Kueh, Hazel Lim, Ian Woo.
© 2022
