(b.1973, Malaysia) grauated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from MARA University of Technology (UiTM), Malaysia. Her work is made up of objects, assemblage and performance with a focus on language, the nature of memory and personal experiences. Shooshie has exhibited internationally, most recently in the Asia Pacific Triennial 2009, Brisbane, Australia; Documenta 12, 2008, Kassel, Germany; the 9th Havana Biennale, 2006, Cuba; Art Space Gallery, 2005, Kuala Lumpur; and The Guangdong Museum of Art,2004, Guangzhou, China. She also curates exhibitions and runs 12 (Artspace) in Kuala Lumpur.

Curator’s note:

Shooshie Sulaiman is known for the intuitive and emotional frameworks that guide her practice in performance, installation, text and drawing. She produces work based on a sensitive connection with the unseen and her surfaces are made up of haunting images and streams of consciousness. Intimate in scale, this is a private conversation between the artist, her subject and those who participate in her performative projects. It is a type of personal cosmology, based on otherworldly energy transmission and signifiers of the uncanny. Audiences must therefore connect with the work through tapping into their own subconscious fears and desires.

The works selected for the exhibition display a complex response to the dynamics of the three main racial demographics in Malaysia (Indian, Chinese and Malay). Shooshie presents imagined histories that respond to both the individuals in the frame and the public connotations they embody on race.  Selecting found studio photography from Malaysia’s past, she combines nostalgia with her own surreal interventions. Layers of other images, paint, text, and writing physically alter the photographs she has chosen. This way she creates a dialogue between herself and the subjects she sees. In addition she also reveals the fragility of the photographic surface. It is something that can be altered and questioned. The authority of the image is therefore open for physical and conceptual debate.

As the smallest works in the show they convey the intimacy of photography and are also the only ones trapped in a frame. This creates a barrier between the viewer and the object, a more protective museological approach in response to their age and condition. God Save the Queen is a photograph in decay. A large section is corroding. Here the photograph as an object is apparent. Despite its authority and perceived immortality it is nevertheless still affected by time. What see is a double memento mori of the long lost subjects in the image as well as photography itself.