In a strange dialogue between Hermann Hesse and Yee I-Lann, thinking back to my last trip in Malaysia, I discover an artisanal and artistic side, made up of traditions betrayed and recovered, which I did not know.
“Asia was not an area of the world but rather a very specific but mysterious place somewhere between India and China. That is where the various peoples and their teachings and their religions had come from, there lay the roots of all humanity and the source of all life; there stood the images of the gods and the tables of the Law. Oh, how had I been able to forget that, even for a moment!? I had been on my way to that Asia for such a long time already.”
Hermann Hesse. “Singapore Dream and Other Adventures”
For Hermann Hesse, Western and Far Eastern thinking represented poles of a unity that were not mutually exclusive, but complemented.
The evening, before falling asleep, lately I’m reading Hermann Hesse, just finished reading the incredible, labyrinthine and mysterious ‘Journey to the East‘, which I could describe as a dream that wraps around itself and slowly slips away like sand between your fingers—leaving you with nothing but the desire to find out more.
After reading it in one go, I moved on to ‘Singapore Dream and other adventure’. A collection of writings taken from his diary.
In 1911, with a couple of successful novels already under his belt, Hesse was invited by a friend of his, the painter Hans Sturzenegger, to accompany him to Singapore to visit Sturzenegger’s brother, who was running the family business there.
Hermann Hesse arrived at Penang Island, off the coast of the Malay Peninsula, at the of September, where they were met by Sturzenegger’s brother and bought their tropical suits.
Meanwhile, in this Days, in Shanghai is almost Lockdown, Again. My family and I are stuck at home, I watched some videos online and I see a curious one, a multimedia artist who works also with local craftsmanship. I’m immediately intrigued by Yee I-Lann, the artist I saw in the Art-Basel video presented by Nowness, I immediately discover that she is Malaysian, precisely from Kota Kinabalu.
While Hermann Hesse was visiting and amazed to see the extraordinary Chinese theatre, he was, instead, horrified by Malaysian theatre’s sinister and miserable attempt to imitate European theatre. Malay mimes acted, sang, and danced the story of Ali Baba in a kind of variety-show style, he wrote in his journal.
Hesse points out how poor Malaysians everywhere hopelessly hung up on the basest European influences. I discovered the minimalistic and delicate Yee I-Lann photomontages and her very light but powerful thought.
The word table, in pre-colonial Malaysian culture, does not exist.
Malaysian culture has always carried social life on solid and fantastic hand-made mats.
“Table in my imagery represent colonial power or an idea of patriarchy” Yee I-Lann
Yee I-Lann imagines an army of tables to represent the idea of colonization. Where the table embodies the new way of seeing and thinking of the Malaysian community, “whoever brings the table will also be the one who will tell you who you are, what is your story, what is worth keeping in a museum”—paraphrasing what the artist says in the interview with NOWNESS.
This is a beautiful way to visualize and solidify what, otherwise, would be just an abstract concept, too easily pushed aside in everyday life.
Following this thought, the mat also becomes an artistic element for Yee I-Lann.
To decolonize, you must be able to see the ‘table’ and the ‘mat’. What more powerful way to show this simple concept than the works shown above, where mats were created by Malaysian women hands to become surface and theatre to view the mise-en-scène of the table.
