Sunday November 30, 2008

An outer body experience

Review and photo by RACHEL JENAGARATNAM

You see yourself in a whole new light in this four-part art installation.

WHEN YOU ARE NOT IN YOUR BODY
The Project Room, Valentine Willie Fine Art, KL, Nov 15-Dec 5

THE last time I visited Valentine Willie Fine Art’s Project Room, the space – known for exhibiting more experimental art than its parent gallery – was showcasing Chang Yoong Chia and Teoh Ming Wah’s piece for the Bombay Sapphire Art Projects 2008, Safe House: Flora & Fauna III. White paint cloaked the walls and the artists’ installation functioned as a cabinet of curiosities, with art posed briefly as artefacts housed, as if in a natural history museum, in glass cabinets and mounted on walls.

Everybody, in the grid of photos in the background, uses digital images of visitors captured in the installation’s previous section called Anybody. In the foreground – looking disturbingly like a coffin – is the section called Somebody, which also uses the visitor’s captured image to deconstruct then re-combine body parts.

Painted birds had bent metal forks for feet, dogs’ skulls were transformed into miniature car models – and, combined with anecdotes from Chang’s imaginative childhood and factual texts on the objects or subjects, the installation cleverly blurred the lines between fact and fiction. I, for one, have never seen the procession of the magi, or a desert crossing, reproduced with real teeth.

This month, I returned to the Project Room to view the second installation of the Bombay Sapphire Art Projects, which features the work of Lim Kok Yoong, or Wing, as he usually goes by. While his When You are Not Your Body bears a similarity to Safe House and previous Project Room tenants, Lim’s proposal outshines the rest for its espousal of new media and intentions to explore beyond conventional media, chiefly painting, which in the climate of contemporary Malaysian art – and that is much welcomed.

When You are Not Your Body takes a decidedly digital flavour, and technology is embraced for all its marvellous properties.

The installation is divided into four parts, and the viewer – it’s recommended that viewers enter the space one at a time – leaves the neutral space, called Nobody, by traversing the makeshift corridor of curtains to the next pit stop, where the word “Anybody” is printed on the wall. Here, a simple mirror reflects your physiognomic self while a hidden camera records your presence as part of the artwork.

At this juncture, I suppose the idea is to contemplate notions of self-identity, of the gaze that confronts you in the mirror, and to make profound existentialist arguments. In my case, there is success, as Liew Kwai Fei, gallery staff and an artist in his own right, informs me that I will need footstools to be able to view my reflection. The notion of my “self” is reflected before me immediately: I am short.

After the audible click of the camera, I proceed to Somebody to view the results of the shortly humiliating encounter. I peer down into the specially crafted box, which looks very much like a giant photocopy machine, to see my head digitally transplanted onto a male body. I am surprised by the misallocation of gender, but Liew – clearly, my guardian angel in viewing this artwork – turns up and presses a toggle that transforms the digital projection into a woman’s body.

I feel better after the digital surgery, but find it mildly disconcerting to view my own face peering at me statically from the lightboxes below. Any natural colour is washed out and I look ghostly.

The experience of viewing your “self”, trapped as one of the artist’s subjects, is meant to trigger contemplations of mortality – and, indeed, when I step back from the giant photocopy machine, I realise it also looks like an unadorned coffin with a digital version of me lying inside.

The final stage is a projection on the wall, where a sequence of 81 images of other viewers appears and which is aptly entitled Everybody.

I wait patiently as the computers – there are three in total – work their magic, and my face joins the other mugshots. It is an exercise in relating the “self” with the “other”, but also the most fun part of the lot. During my visit, I spot artists, a film director, Liew, and even Lim himself – all of us rebuffing the rules of time and joining each other in the artwork not only in the present, but also in the immediate past and the future.

And this is where I come to realise that When You are Not Your Body is not as morbid as I had imagined or as the exhibition’s literature makes it out to be. As I scan the faces on the wall – mostly smiling – and despite the deep bass and tremulous tones of the sonic art (masterfully crafted by Dinesh De Silva and Dean Linguey) surrounding me, it is actually a rather happy experience because I realise, I am not alone after all.

I also notice that many faces in Everybody are repeats and later ask Liew why this is so and he honestly answers, “Because it’s fun”

He’s right. The participatory element is a welcome aspect in art. It marks a democratisation from the otherwise “sacred” artwork that demands distance, if not from the stern-looking gallery attendant, then from its alarming price tag.

This observation does not devalue Lim’s artwork in any way, if anything, it makes the site-specific artwork quite a success.

And so, I return to the footstools waiting patiently for me at Anybody to take my picture again.

‘When You Are Not Your Body’ is on at The Project Room, Valentine Willie Fine Art (1st Floor, No. 17, Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur) until Friday. For more information, call 03-2284 2348 or go to vwfa.net/kl.

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Pushing boundaries