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ZAI KUNING represents Singapore at the 57th Venice Biennale. Photo courtesy the National Arts Council, Singapore.
Zai Kuning’s haunting presentation for the Singapore Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale featured a 17-meter-long skeleton of a sea vessel that traverses the hall of the Sale d’Armi building of the Arsenale. The tenuous yet compelling structure of the ship is constructed from rattan and bound together by modest red string and beeswax. Looming above a sheet of metal, which is akin to the reflective surface of a pool of water, the vessel appears as a ghostly apparition or a resurrected relic of ancient history.
“Dapunta Hyang: Transmission of Knowledge” was a culmination of an ongoing body of work that investigates Malay history and culture through the lesser-known narratives of the orang laut (sea people). The orang laut are the nomadic fishermen of the Riau Archipelago, believed to be the indigenous people of the island city-state known today as Singapore. Zai, a multidisciplinary artist based in Singapore and Malaysia, embarked on a series of voyages throughout Indonesia in search of the elusive nomads between 1998 and 2003. His enquiry was rooted in an early exposure to the sea while growing up in a kampong (village) on the west coast of Singapore. For his participation at the Venice Biennale, the artist staged the fifth iteration of a site-specific installation that he has been working on since 2014. More so than before, this latest version embeds the artist’s desires to excavate his personal history, and the biographical narrative emerges as a site to reimagine the forgotten history of pre-modern Singapore.
Zai’s installation is an artistic re-imagination of the voyage of Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa, who is believed to be the first ruler of the Malay kingdom in the 7th century, although he is rarely acknowledged in canonical narratives of Singapore’s history. On either side of the hull are two piles of books, placed ritualistically as though they will transmit knowledge to guide the vessel on its journey. Alongside the colossal structure are vitrines that hold 31 black-and-white photographic portraits of mak yong performers, documenting a traditional form of folk theater that originated in northern Malaysia, coupled with a recording of a mak yong master speaking in an ancient Malay dialect. Is this a tribute to an ancient art? Are the portraits an attempt at synchrony with the present day, serving as timely reminders of how our histories can so easily be lost?
In “Dapunta Hyang: Transmission of Knowledge,” Zai inserts the forgotten narratives of the orang laut and mak yong traditions into the Arsenale, a former shipyard. Zai draws parallels between Singapore and Venice by intertwining their histories of maritime trade. As the artist mines the shared past of these two locations, he poignantly provokes consideration of identity, culture, displacement and the consequences of the loss of ancestry and tradition, prompting ruminations on the after-effects of capitalist expansion in the city-state. By deliberating on the circumstances that shape us today, Zai confronts the gradual disappearance of communities that have become strangers in their own land, as well as the “imminent ‘slow death’ of the orang laut, a function of colonization, a result of the creation of nation states, and capitalistic transformations that followed,” as encapsulated by Ahmad Mashadi, head of the National University of Singapore Museum, in the exhibition catalog. As a response to a nation where change is a tradition itself, Zai Kuning’s presentation at the 57th Venice Biennale delivered an unnerving reminder about what and who gets left behind in an ever-evolving Singapore.
The Venice Biennale runs until November 26, 2017.
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