This panel recognises the strategic potential of Asian Studies in analysing the deeper and intimate implications of aesthetic materials of the region displayed and appreciated in museums and archives globally. Many artefacts and art collections in metropolitan and urban museums in Singapore and Malaysia are the legacies of British colonialism and the communal systems it created around its rule. While studies of these objects, from fine paintings to crafted implements of everyday use form the essence of art history knowledge of the region, they are less often interrogated to be the aesthetic building blocks for power and perspective, or in even more familiar terms, divide and rule of governance. In this organised roundtable presenters will present case studies from their areas of research and professional work to analyse how and why power and perspective should undergird the purpose of a decolonisation method in the curation of Malayness and the Malay world. Through this, panellists will question and propose if, and how representations of “Malayness” and the “Malay world” should, or could be curated for present-day insights and reflection of Asia as site for the deconstruction and construction of critical new knowledges.
PANEL
Chairperson: Priya Jaradi | NUS Department of History
Discussant: Suriani Suratman | NUS Department of Malay Studies
Discussant: Imran Tajudeen | NUS Department of Malay Studies and Department of Architecture
Maznah Mohamad | NUS Department of Malay Studies
A Malayness of the Late Nineteenth Century: Reflections on the Malay World Skeat Collection at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
More than 1000 items representing a ‘Malay’ society from the western and northeastern part of Malaya were collected by Walter William Skeat in the late 1890s. Skeat was an officer and scholar who had served the British colonial government in Malaya during the late nineteenth century. He was the author of Malay Magic, which was first published in 1900. In 1899 at the end of his service as Assistant District Officer of Kuala Langat, Selangor he shipped more then 1400 objects to the present Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA). Some other collections donated to the museum were from his later expedition to the northeastern part of the Malay Peninsula. In the 14th Annual Report of the Museum, dated June 1899, 17 categories of items, from dress to locomotives to royal insignias, including disposal of the dead were listed as making up some of the Skeat collections. These items were hardly ever displayed, and even more so, even unpacked from their original state of wrapping for the last 127 years. In November 2023, I had the opportunity to view these objects at the MAA. Details on the objects’ provenance and contexts of their uses and makers were thin and sketchy. Some of the most interesting objects in the collection included a variety of up to 40 Malay boat models, weapons of many characteristics and uses, up to 150 shadow puppets representing human and animal characters and two palm leaf manuscripts, one in an illustrated form and the other written in a yet to be ascertained script and language. An interesting question that may be posed from a study of these objects, is that if one does not have any pre-conceived notion of who were behind them, could the objects be matched to their specific cultural, racial or religious group, particularly one of a Malay-Muslim identity? Could the objects represent or deconstruct a notion of Malayness of the late nineteenth century? These are some of the points of discussion in this presentation.
Syafiqah Jaaffar | National Museum of Singapore
Hidden Hands and an Overpowering Name: reworking natural history drawings in the museum
Goh Sze Ying | Curatorial and Research, National Gallery Singapore
Malyanah Manap | (Formerly staff, Information Management, National Gallery Singapore)
What Remains to be Seen: cataloguing, collecting, and researching Malay artists
This paper reviews works by Malay artists in the collection of artworks and archives at National Gallery Singapore, highlighting research strategies and collecting efforts between 2018 and 2022. The impetus for this research and collection thrust comes from the dearth of works in representing cohesive or comprehensive surveys or singular oeuvres of Malay artists born and based in Singapore and Malaysia. Existing challenges to the ongoing research, archiving, and collecting efforts come from gaps in research continuity as well as a lack of access to artworks and archives. The types and number of works in the collection have a direct impact on representation and scholarship. In addition to statistical clarity, how may collating these figures and scrutinising such demographics contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the priorities and hierarchies of aesthetic choices informing regional modernism? How may other types of resources including archives, oral interviews, printed publications (particularly, those in Malay and Jawi), and metadata be activated to address this gap and buttress art historical research?
Since its inception in 2015, the Gallery has staged a number of exhibitions focussing on Malay artists and their contribution to Southeast Asian modern art history, including Iskandar Jalil (Kembara Tanah Liat, 2017), Latiff Mohidin (Pago Pago, 2020), Mohammad Din Mohammad (The Mistaken Ancestor, 2021) and Jaafar Latiff (In the Time of Textile, 2021). These exhibitions have opened up opportunities for the Gallery to pursue and peruse primary material outside of the collection through the support from the artists and their estates. Concurrent to these opportunities instantiated by exhibition projects, archival material from societies (one such case study is the digitised archive of Angkatan Pelukis Aneka Daya or APAD) play a significant role in addressing gaps in artwork research by providing evidence and context of display histories and exhibitions. Finally, the paper highlights how museum administration such as information management, copyright clearance and database verification of metadata records of artist’s information and their works in the collection act as a para-curatorial strategy in complementing efforts towards cataloguing, collecting, and researching Malay artists at the Gallery.