Given that I am currently interning at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the East Asia Exhibit, I thought it could be worthwhile to focus on the state of art in Malaysia for my second cultural artifact. In particular, I am interested in exploring how art has been used as a means of political expression in the country's recent history. Mahathir Mohamad not only resided over Malaysia for over two decades as Prime Minister from 1981 to 2003, but he also returned to it once again in 2018 following the infamous 1MDB scandal and remains in the position at the current age of 94 (making him the oldest sitting state leader in the world). Mahathir's legacy has indeed been janus-faced, on one hand propelling the country into an economic transformation while on the other tightening censorship and restricting freedoms. In this post, I will touch upon how art with social commentary has factored into both Mahathir's past and present reigns and explore how the landscape has shifted and evolved.
The above picture is a photograph of a 2016 exhibit put on in the Ilham Gallery in Kuala Lumpur. Called "Era Mahathir," the gallery explored the rise of art as a means of social commentary during the 1980s and 1990s. The aforementioned dualistic reality of growth and an increasingly repressive central state created a tension in Malaysian society. Writers, journalists, and academics were largely discouraged from outright critiquing the state, though art at the time not only bypassed the state's at times rigid censorship protocols, but flourished in both public and private galleries, museums, etc. According to Chen May Yee in a New York Times publication on the Era Mahathir gallery, the government continued to see art as innocuous or at the very least unthreatening. At the same time, the economic boost the country had seen meant that more and more wealthy Malaysians were interested in procuring art as private collectors, in turn funding the industry. The "'can do' spirit" (Malaysia Boleh in Malay) of the time thus extended beyond economic growth alone and poured into other realms, like the arts. As that same article notes, there was a great deal of censorship or at the very least antipathy towards art in neighboring countries, so the exception in Malaysia allowed the industry to flourish.
After Mahathir left office in 2003, the government began to stop turning a blind eye to the messages and implications some contemporary art carried. Former Prime Minister Najib Razik, for instance, charged one artist on two counts of cybercrime for portraying the official as a clown and as part of a kleptocracy on Instagram and Facebook and imprisoned them for it. This type of censorship was already happening elsewhere in Malaysian society, but has seemed to spill into the arts as well.
I was curious as to whether this censorship would disappear following the return of Mahathir to office, though it seems the case that even Mahathir's administration is clamping down on dissidence and political expression in art that is critical of official platforms.Just this month, the National Gallery in Kuala Lumpur took to censoring the work of four artists. This is especially interesting given the fact that public galleries under Mohamad in the 1980s and '90s were venues for artistic expression and social commentary, but seem to now be more closely regulated by the central state. It is an unfortunate development that art in Malaysia is now subject to censorship and content restrictions, especially given its former outlier status compared to its neighbors. Only time will tell how the future of the art world will be affected, but, as it stands, artists in Malaysia were not pleased with the most recent censorship efforts and will likely not give up their efforts at speech altogether, regardless of the state's response.
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/arts/international/a-malaysian-art-scene-under-the-radar.html
http://www.ilhamgallery.com/exhibitions/era-mahathir/
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/national-art-gallery-kuala-lumpur-censorship-1774974
https://theartling.com/en/artzine/era-mahathir-ilham-gallery-kl/
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1639987/3-malaysian-court-jails-fines-artist-clown-caricature-pm/
Replies
Bryan,
Thank you for this insightful cultural post! I learned about a part of the Malaysian society that I did not know about. I wasn't aware that censorship and content restriction of political expression through art would be frowned upon in this country. However, I am not surprised because there are other countries that I know of that execute in the same manner. I do hope the day comes where people can freely exhibit and practice their freedom of speech through not just through art but also political action. Thanks again or sharing this.