"In Between Commodities & Ornaments"

Exhibition

"Objects are empty carriers of implied values,
inserted meanings recreating creations anew.

Like chemical reactions, our stories enact,
With each other it communicates our informal
pact.

In between mine, our shared past combine,
our reality is for ourselves only to define.

Come and join us and hear our works sing,
together like a choir, it’s more than just a bling."

As a continuation to our previous Happy Oriental Trading Co. store exhibition, we're happy that we were able to once again initiate another exhibition. After so much struggles and things keep appearing causing us to stress out, we still managed to come together and end our year with another lovely exhibition We are happy to be able to continue our idea and belief of opening up narratives and sharing the stories of the community in KABK.

In this exhibition, I collaborated with Moto Sasaki who quite oddly share a similar background. Sasaki is a Japanese art student yet he lived most of his life in Indonesia and was fluent in the local language — which is similar to Malay. Meanwhile, I am a Malaysian student that has previously lived in Japan. We both share a longing for our respective belonging yet also felt distanced towards this longing. Through his photographs, we see the moments he experienced
living in Indonesia yet through his lens, there was a sense of distance between him and the locals; it invoked the suggestion of a desire to assimilate with the locals — despite spending most of his life there. Intertwining his photographs, I presented tiles where I drew using watercolour ink, of how I imagined the oral stories of my family. I chose this medium as it is not permanent and could easily be erased when touched, suggesting the transforming nature of oral traditions as well as the desperation of holding on to these stories. We also created a composition that emulates the nature of weaving, not only because weavings i.e. songket are an important part of Malaysia and Indonesia’s culture but also because weavings and their patterns have always been a common way of passing on traditions and stories by generations.


Special thanks to Prithvi for also helping us setting up.
Special thanks to the members of the team for believing in each other and committing to the exhibition.
And lastly, many thanks to everyone that took the time to visit and converse with us, allowing us
to share our stories as well as your stories. It means a lot for us and hopefully, we will see each
other again and create even more dialogue.

In Between Commodities & Ornaments

Self-initiated exhibition, 2020.
Marcos Kueh, Vy Đặng, Kaiming Li, Samridhhi Ghattak (Simbu), Moto Sasaki, Agnar Freyr, Jeremi Biziuk, Yannis Androulakis, Isabelle Nair-Lacheta & Nurul Ain Binti Nor Halim.
Textiles, woodworks, ceramic works, photographs, tiles, handmade sand bags.
Displayed in a gallery space in the institution of the Royal Academy of Arts Den Haag.
Photographs taken by Nurul Ain Binti Nor Halim.