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Chasing old ghosts down the dank and dark alleyways of central Kuala Lumpur has become a palliative game for Malaysian artists these past few months.
Whether it’s heated banter about thwarted artworks while dining al fresco after a gallery opening, or mounting installations poking fun at new prime minister Najib Razak, or even surviving police arrests at candle-lit vigils for Malaysia’s sickly democracy, the nostalgia here for a previous era and its ghosts of a less racially-divided polity seems palpable, just as the economy sinks into its deepest crisis in a generation.
It’s a sentiment found wafting about the four, huge photographic montages that make up Liew Kung Yu’s first major solo show at the Galeri Petronas, Cadangan-cadangan untuk Negaraku (Proposals for my nation). In what is the best Malaysian contemporary exhibition in a long time, the jaunty, kitschy celebrations of Malaysia’s populist monumentalism belie a darker, almost totalitarian vision, of a nationalist conceit supposedly killed off by that so-called ‘end of history’ moment when the Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago.
While the weekend mall crowd wandering in twitter and laugh at the knowing juxtapositions of suburban and village icons, this mostly middle-class audience also murmur approval for the show’s circular space, which lend the works a visual impact beyond the confines of a usual white…
