Contemporary photo show explores local heritage, identity and community connections
GEORGE TOWN: You can leave Penang, live elsewhere for years and even become a citizen of another country, but you can never quite leave Penang behind.
That enduring connection to place, identity and heritage is at the heart of a contemporary photography exhibition by seven artists from across Malaysia, including Sarawak, now being held at the Penang Institute.
Penang State Art Gallery chairman and art collector Lee Khai, who was the guest of honour at Sunday’s opening, said heritage was not something merely preserved but something lived.
“You may leave Penang, you may live somewhere else for many years, you may even become a foreign citizen but there are certainly things that you carry with you.
“You can take a person out of Penang, but you cannot take Penang out of a person,” he said at the launch of “For Our State: A Contemporary Photography Exhibition on Penang” (Untuk Negeri Kita), curated by Stephen Menon under the ArtVoice Gallery.
Lee said Penang had a gift for absorbing people from elsewhere and making them its own, pointing to Lithuanian muralist Ernest Zacharevic, whose street art has become synonymous with George Town, as an example.
The seven artists – Choy Khye Fatt, Lim Siang Jin, Constance Teo, Ling Nan Ley, Ravindran Munusamy, Stephen Menon and Eric Peris – come from varied professional backgrounds, bringing different perspectives to what Penang’s heritage means today.
Lee said photography in the hands of an artist went beyond documentation, adding that the exhibition invited viewers to consider what each work revealed about themselves.
Meanwhile, Penang Institute executive director Datuk Dr Ooi Kee Beng, in his presentation “Shifting Mankind’s Self-image”, argued that humanity needed a new way of understanding itself beyond dominant self-images like Homo Sapiens (man the wise, the rational) and Homo Economicus (man the maximiser of self-benefits).
He coined a new term, Homo Praedo (man the predator, the plunderer, the pillager), as the conceptual opposite of Homo Artifex (man the creator), saying artists needed to navigate this tension in an increasingly multipolar world.
At 73, retired hospitality and advertising professional Choy presented six giclée prints on canvas exploring Straits Chinese shophouse gables through the feng shui concept of “Heaven and Earth”.
“What I’m trying to create is something historically and culturally valuable to Penang, which is being overlooked,” he told theSun.
Teo, 65, a lawyer, turned her lens towards George Town’s street food vendors in her series “Enduring Motions”.
A pushcart at Lebuh Kimberley caught her attention because its colours mirror the Penang flag.
Ravindran, 35, a lecturer, presented “The Last Ride”, a black-and-white portrait capturing a day in the life of a trishaw rider on Armenian Street, beginning at 5.30am.
He deliberately avoided colour to keep the focus on his subject.
Ling, 66, a retired geologist from Sarawak, presented his “Beacon” series, six impressionistic studies using intentional blur to evoke the dignity of age and impermanence in Penang’s colonial-era churches and streets.
Lim, 75, the founding director of The Edge and a veteran journalist, contributed four mixed-media works inspired by the Eight Auspicious Symbols found on Nyonya porcelain, pairing motifs to create new visual conversations.
Stephen, 54, the exhibition’s curator and founder of ArtVoice Gallery, which supports minority artists, contributed “Life in a Postcard Series: Wish You Were Here”, combining silkscreen with collaged family photographs to imagine an alternative personal history.
Peris, whose atmospheric black-and-white studies “Stalls at Daybreak I & II” are on show, was unable to attend the opening.
Choy will conduct a “Capture to Print” artist sharing session on Sept 19 at 11am at the Penang Institute.
“For Our State” is open daily until Sept 27 at Penang Institute, 10 Jalan Brown, George Town.
The exhibition takes its title from the Penang state anthem, Untuk Negeri Kita, composed by 2nd Lt Awaluddin Zainal Alam, son of legendary broadcaster Datuk Zainal Alam, which won a state competition in 1972.
