Of Pride And Shame in Malaysia
In honour of Pride month I want to share about my first paintings that I exhibited in an art gallery.
Pride (2021), acrylic on canvas, 61cm x 91cm, private collection (left)
Shame (2021), mixed media on canvas, 61cm x 91cm, private collection (right)
I created a diptych (a painting comprising two parts) for Zhan Art Space, an art gallery located in Petaling Jaya for an open-call group exhibition with the theme ‘Duality’. The piece consists of Pride (left) & Shame (right). This piece is a representation of the struggles queer people experience in Malaysia.
Pride is a geometrical abstract piece inspired by the colours of the rainbow pride flag that was originally designed by Gilbert Baker featuring 8 colours. The current iteration of the pride flag with 6 stripes is now eponymous with the LGBTQIA community. The colours hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo and violet represent sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic, serenity and spirit respectively.
I chose to deconstruct the rainbow flag and use different shades of colors in the pride flag to represent how queer people have different lived experience. Queer people experience love, sex and life differently depending on their culture, country, socioeconomic status amongst a host of other factors.
On the otherhand the piece, ‘Shame’ depicts the painful side of the queer experience. I aim to represent the challenges that are unique to the queer community, the hostility, queerphobia, internal struggles and discrimination that queer people experience in spheres of life as vast as education, healthcare, employment and within social structures such as family units and social networks.
Who is most well-acquainted with duality, the act of living dual identities; of traversing between the realms of performative cisheteronormativity and their queer existence out of the fear of social ostrisicasation, losing one’s job, losing family, losing their support network if not queer people? Queer and gender theorist Judith Butler, writes of the performativity of gender. That life is a theatre and that gender is a role one has to continuously perform correctly with failure to do so resulting in societal sanctions. Where one is punished for not speaking, sitting, eating, dressing, loving and living ‘correctly’. Countless Malaysians do not have the privilege of coming out and thus live dual identities, appearing as cishet individuals and secretly living a double life. Where they are forced to love and to live in private. Hiding signficant aspects of their lives from those closest to them because of fear, stigma and retribution.
I came out as gay to my friends and family 12 years ago when I was 14 years old. That decision almost cost me my life. Significant changes have been made in the past decade even in a country as conservative as Malaysia with more and more queer communities existing online and offline.
These two pieces are dedicated to all the queer Malaysians I’ve had the opportunity to speak, laugh, cry, dance, eat, fall in love and be friends with. To the countless LGBTQIA Malaysians who have shared with me the stories, to the advocates within our community, to those who organize safe spaces so our community can briefly exist without the threat of vindication, to all the queer Malaysians in the closet, out of the closet. To those who are questioning, to those who have found themselves, to those rediscovering themselves once again. To my Malaysian LGBTQIA family, these two paintings are dedicated to each and every one of you.
Happy Pride, sayang. 🏳️🌈