On 1 September 2021, CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile) launched the first solo exhibition by Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann in Hong Kong. Now soon coming to a close, “Until We Hug Again” showcases the resilient spirit of people in Sabah, Yee I-Lann’s state of origin in Malaysia.
Through existing works and new commissions, the show offers open stage performative experiences, and during its course has presented many interactive and co-learning programmes. Yee’s works also suggest a common thread that connects Hong Kong and Malaysia, through their shared history of colonisation and its influence over local culture and life.
Takahashi Mizuki, Executive Director and Chief Curator of CHAT, and the curator of the exhibition, says the show balances “between the socio-political of grand historical narratives and the minute triumphs of the personal and communal”.
The curator goes on to say that the exhibition “aims to present the resilience of art through creating solidarity between people and communities through Yee’s artistic journey”.
Yee I-Lann was born in Kota Kinabalu, the State of Sabah, Malaysia, where she still resides and works. Here, she engages with local communities and the history of the Southeast Asian Archipelago, its colonial past and postcolonial present. Through her primarily photomedia-based practice, she explores the region’s turbulent history, addressing the socio-political and economic impact of current politics, neo-colonialism and globalisation.
Emerging as one of the most significant artists of the region, Yee established her practice with the digital manipulation of found images and historical archives, to explore historical narratives presented from a single perspective and capturing complex cultural identities manifested through the geopolitical history of Southeast Asia and its archipelago.
CHAT calls her “a critical examiner of image production and material nature”, as the artist always chooses her materials and techniques with care, in order to best represent the complexity of the region’s multi-ethnic cultural identity and heritage. At CHAT, Yee echoes the space’s history as a former cotton-spinning mill, presenting works that look at textiles as a response to the archipelago’s colonial history and a representation of its complex cultural identity.
The Hong Kong show came just a couple of months after Yee’s first ever exhibition in her hometown, titled “Borneo Heart”, made in collaboration with weavers, filmmakers, dancers, and other fellow creative producers and friends from her local community. There, the artist focused on two pivotal concepts in local life and culture: the tikar (woven mat) as a collective platform for community, storytelling and ritual, and the tamu (weekly market) as a meeting place for the exchange of goods, stories and ideas. Yee brought the first concept to the Hong Kong space, making of the site a sort of local tamu for visitors.
In her recent work, Yee has collaborated with weavers from the indigenous Sabah communities, including the Dusun/Murut land people and the Bajau Laut/Sama Dilaut sea people. Yee uses the traditional tikar woven mat as a means to connect to the local communities she works with as well as to explore alternative forms of circular economy to revitalise and sustain local skills and knowledge. In her video Tikar Reben (2021), the artist and her local collaborators unfurl a two-hundred-foot-long textile made from dried pandan leaves in vibrant colours. Together, they stretch it out over the waters off Omadal Island to a cluster of stilt houses inhabited by the seaborne Sama Dilaut community, a symbolic act linking the island dwellers of Sabah.
Two large-scale, handwoven tikar have been on display at The Hall of The Mills from the beginning of the show until 17 October as a special, participatory display. Two large tikar hung from the ceiling, while a third, titled Tikar Emoji, was installed on the ground as a stage that encouraged visitors’ interaction.
One of the hanging tikar has the words tanah (land) and air (water/sea) woven into it, and was created for the “Borneo Heart” show. It signifies the exchanges between the people of the land and the sea, ultimately hinting at the shared platform for experiecing traditional and contemporary art practices. The works here are also intended to prompt us to reflect on notions of home and distance, power, agency and representation, love and community.
Part of the exhibition is also a new commission inspired by classic Cantopop, a kind of spin-off from the “Borneo Heart” work Dusun Karaoke Mat: Ahaid zou noh doiti (I’ve been here a long time) (2020), which reproduces lyrics from popular songs in both the Sabah and the Dusun language. Yee points out that these karaoke songs have found their way into the life of the younger generations of Sabahan people, becoming iconic anthems of resistance against the continuing climate of cultural homogenisation in Malaysia.
In a similar way, the woven mat at CHAT displays rows of text from the lyrics of iconic Cantonese popular songs. This new tikar is a nod to the transcultural influence between Hong Kong and the artist’s native country, looking beyond their shared history of colonisation and impact on local culture and life. Yee has created this work to also encourage visitors to consider aspects of dominant culture homogenisation, as in her “Borneo Heart” work, and the shared experience of the inhabitants of a common cultural space.
The exhibition “Borneo Heart” also marked the first full presentation of Rasa Sayang, here displayed on two adjacent walls. The monumental presentation is a 488-piece photographic “essay” on the concepts of love and country, which the artist begun in 2012 and completed in 2021. Through this photomedia work, Yee creates the alphabet from images of human hugs, an act that comes to signify many things, including care, love and reconcilation.
In light of the latter concept, Yee’s work has focused on bringing together sea- and mountain-based indigenous communities, who historically have not really been close to each other and have been nurturing animosities also stoked by colonial rulers. In 2019, Yee brought the two communities together for the first time to work on her first woven piece, Tikar-A-Gagah. Sea island women traditionally use the leaves of the pandanus palm, and dye them in vivacious colours. Mountain people weave bamboo stripes and use natural dyes. Yee accommodated both preferences, allowing for each of the two forms to be part of and combine into her two-sided woven mats. Her collaborations and effort to bring together diverse communities celebrate multi-cultural heritage, while also sending a message of solidarity, resilience and reconciliation in times when cooperation, unity and mutual understanding are needed most, globally.
C. A. Xuân Mai Ardia
“Yee I-Lann: Until We Hug Again” runs from 1 September to 7 November 2021 at CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile), The Mills, Hong Kong.