Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore is pleased to present Imagine Malaysia, the theme for this year’s annual Singapore Survey exhibition. The handing over of the Malayan Railway Station in August 2011 will be more than a symbolic resolution of a thorny issue. More importantly, it marks the potential for a new beginning in the relationship between the people of Malaysia and Singapore. The histories of these two countries, once intertwined through the Federation of Malaya, but now in competitive parallel with one another has been marked with both political contention and shared affections of multi-cultural race, religion and culture. Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore takes the railway handover as a starting point to task Singaporean artists to imagine Malaysia, and reflect upon their closest geographical neighbour.

Through humour, irony, poetics and critique, a selection of artists across generations will interpret not only their perspectives, as Singaporeans, on Malaysia, but also the blurred boundaries between the two nations. As different sides of what could be said to be the same coin, the possibilities for both Singapore and Malaysia are limitless. By purposefully choosing to begin with a spirit of hope, 20 artists were encouraged to envision work that looks back at the past; to configure a multi-faceted future across painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation.

The concept of country, nation and place is a convergence point of fluctuating histories, culture, economics, politics and peoples set against the backdrop of a geographical landscape. Ideologically, it is an imagined entity defined by borders but porous in nature, absorbing the influences of social and political developments. Difficult enough for its own citizens to define due to conflicting perceptions between government and grass roots, Imagine Malaysia places this process of reflection and understanding on a neighbouring State to layer its own multiple readings of people, place and space. This is, not just any neighbouring State, but one whose own identity has been inherently and directly shaped by its links with Malaysia. But what are the Singaporean perspectives and biases on the land across the Causeway? Is it the sights, sounds, smells and textures that create romantic associations to place or the weighty realities of politics, economies and national suspicion? Does it go beyond contemporary issues and look to the shared histories of the colonial past, of the similarities and perhaps nostalgic memories of more halcyon and optimistic days during the Federation of Malaya before Singapore left in 1965 to become its own republic? Or is Malaysia simply a backwater Peninsular in comparison to the impressive modernity of the Lion City? These are all questions the artists in Imagine Malaysia have been encouraged to interrogate in their own work to present multi focal points for audiences to form their own entry points into the issue of Nation making.

Malaysia has many things Singapore does not. Land for a start, is in abundance with sweeping jungles and plantations; Kuala Lumpur is a sprawling mass of highways punctuated by city and suburban life. Malaysia possesses many natural resources, alot of which are imported into Singapore. It is often perceived as a more chaotic and dangerous place, less clean and regulated, which causes a sense of disorientation, appeal and anxiety for Singaporeans. The national religion of Malaysia is Islam, the national language is Bahasa Malaysia with a Malay demographic majority which is the opposite of the dominant Chinese and secular population of Singapore. The political structure of Malaysia, now in painful focus due to recent rallies for free and fair election by the coalition of NGO groups under the name Berish (meaning clean in Bahasa Malaysia) is more theatrically contradictory and has pushed the government under yet another glaring spotlight for corruption accusations. Economically, although remaining robust in times of crisis, Malaysia is still falling dramatically behind the success of Singapore which is the fourth leading financial centre in the world, with gleaming sky scrapers, enormous foreign investment and an efficiency that is unique within the Southeast Asian region.

However, with its more relaxed approaches to rules, the transparent suspicions of corruption, and the complex problems of multiculturalism, Malaysia presents rich gaps for exploration and interrogation. There are many pros and cons that any external party could project onto Malaysia but what makes this process of extrapolation far more interesting is that the people of Singapore and Malaysia share many commonalities through race, religion and multiculturalism. The ease of travel from one country to the other for work and pleasure and of interwoven histories creates a more familiar impression of each other. Therefore, although very different and critical of one another we still share certain cultural memories that keep us in constant orbit. Imagine Malaysia places this process of inquiry in the hands of visual artists; the hands of the very people who are living within this shared relationship, to present personal and public observations on what not only Malaysia means to Singapore, but how these two countries reflect and fracture their individual concerns and anxieties based upon their past, and projections into the not so distant future of both nations.

IMAGINE MALAYSIA

Eva McGovern