Front Row

The Titikmerah Collective are celebrating their 8th anniversary with a group exhibition titled ‘Simulacrum’ which means ‘something that looks like or represents something else’. Featuring the works of 18 artists, including core members of the collective and invited artists, the exhibition features paintings, sculptures and digital works. We find out more about the collective and their current exhibition from multidisciplinary artists Ajim Juxta and Blankmalaysia, whose works are also featured in the exhibition. 

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The community theatre play "And Then Came Spring" centres on the life of a child bride in Kabul, who is abandoned by her husband after she has their baby, and his decision sets

off a chain of events that changes everyone’s lives forever. The play is a collaborative effort between refugee community-funded theatre group Parastoo Theatre and the Instant Cafe Theatre Company. We find out more from Saleh Sepas, the co-founder of Parastoo Theatre and director of this play, and Jo Kukathas, the Artistic Director of the Instant Cafe Theatre and dramaturg of the play.

If you’d like to be a supporter of this production, find out more both here and here. For details on how to purchase tickets for the performance, click here.

Image credit: Parastoo Theatre / Instant Cafe Theatre Company

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Stuck at home with nothing to do because of the Movement Control Order? Worry not, because we're here to keep the boredom at bay. Every day, we present our special curated list of arts, culture, and entertainment that you can experience right from your own home. Today, we feature Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber's follow-up to the story of The Phantom of the Opera. Then, we dive with the Yellow Submarine’s sing-along, dress-up watch party.

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2020 has not been kind to our local arts industries. Most shows, festivals and exhibitions had to either close down completely, or experiment by going digital. For this final show of 2020, we try to take an optimistic tone, and discuss what artsmakers have learnt and how the industry can move forward into the new year. Joining us for the conversation are: Bilqis Hijjas, dance producer, Rimbun Dahan; Tan Cher Kian, producer, Instant Cafe Theatre Company; and, Ruby Subramaniam, visual artist & arts organiser.

Image Source: Thow Tsze Ming, Rafil Thazali, Koggelavani Muniandy

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If Darth Vader, Superman, or Wonder Woman were wayang kulit characters, how might their costumes and personalities be reimagined? Fusion Wayang Kulit, a Malaysian troupe that is reviving Kelantanese shadow puppetry by merging it with stories from popular film and comics culture, is attempting to answer this question through a YouTube series called “Puppet Explained”. Best known for their “Peperangan Bintang” show, which retells Star Wars through the art of wayang kulit, each video in their new series focuses on one puppet from their shows and explains the inspirations and designs behind them. We speak with Fusion Wayang Kulit’s founder Tintoy Chuo to learn more.

Image Source: Fusion Wayang Kulit

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Project Ranih is an online archive to collect children’s folk songs of the Kelabit community of Sarawak. We speak with one of the project’s founders, Alena Murang, about the place these songs hold in the Kelabit culture and the challenges of preserving them.

Image Source: Project Ranih 

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The Freedom Film Fest has become a fixture here in the Malaysian cultural calendar, for highlighting documentaries on human rights and social justice that are relevant to this region. Usually the festival is coupled with various live events and talks, but the COVID-19 pandemic this year has limited a lot of that. So we speak to directors of the Freedom Film Network, Anna Har and Brenda Danker, about the Freedom Film Fest 2020 shifting online, and how the pandemic has impacted its filmmakers. We also discuss the relevance of this year’s theme, “Bangsa: Manusia” (or, “Race: Human”), and what we can expect from the documentaries being featured. 

Image Source: Freedom Film Festival 

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Woodcut carving and printmaking occupies an interesting space within visual arts, as it crosses the lines between the traditional and the modern, between folk art and contemporary art. A current exhibition called “Carving Reality” features works from Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, and spotlights the emergence of social realist woodcuts in East Asia. We speak with the exhibition’s curator Krystie Ng about the movement’s history, and why woodcut carving is often a means of criticising imbalances of societal and political power.

Image Source: The Back Room 

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The notion of a Southeast Asian artistic identity is a complicated one, particularly within the context of contemporary art. With 2020 having dealt a huge blow to the arts worldwide, we look at developments and new directions in Southeast Asia: what the challenges are, the current movements, and what the future might hold. To help answer these questions, we speak with Patrick Flores, professor of art studies at the University of the Philippines, and artistic director of the 2019 Singapore Biennale. (Flores is one of the featured speakers at the Gallery Weekend Kuala Lumpur 2020.)

Image Source: Singapore Art Museum

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The Global Migrant Festival is an online arts and literary festival that foregrounds the stories and experiences of low-wage migrant workers and refugees. The organisers of the festival see the arts a window into the human condition, and seek to use it as a medium to have the voices of these communities heard. We speak to two of the festival’s featured performers: Warsan Weedhsan, co-director of the archipelago writers collective; and, Sugiarti, winner of 2019 Singapore Migrant Worker Poetry Competition.

Image Source: Global Migrant Festival 

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