Art Is + Khairulddin Wahab
SP Blog’s series "Art Is +" is an attempt to view art through the eyes of artists and writers themselves. In wide-ranging interviews with vital new artists and writers from both Asia and the USA, the series ushers these voices to the forefront, contextualizing their work with the experiences, processes, and motivations that are unique to each individual artist. "Art Is +" encourages viewers and readers to appreciate art as the multitude of ways in which artists and writers continually engage with our world and the variety of spaces they occupy in it. Read our interviews with Symin Adive, Geraldine Kang, Paula Mendoza, Zining Mok, JinJin Xu, Leonard Yang, Monique Truong, Noorlinah Mohamed, and Vithya Subramaniam.
Khairulddin Wahab in his studio
Khairulddin Wahab is a Singaporean artist and the winner of UOB’s Painting of the Year Award, 2018. In this interview, he offers insight into the philosophical and technical processes that went into creating his first solo exhibition with Cuturi Gallery, The Word for World is Forest. Inspired by archival materials that track a history of the natural world in relation to modern human contexts, Khairulddin’s work offers a re-enchanted perspective on a world that is not only scientific and utilitarian, but magical and spiritual. Guided by an anthropological lens, The Word for World is Forest invites reflection on the ways in which we humans have oriented ourselves toward nature. It welcomes wonder into this era of environmental degradation. The exhibition ran from 21 August to 12 September, 2021, and is now available for digital viewing on both Khairulddin’s and Cuturi Gallery’s websites.
“Natural history is a very Western-centric kind of perspective
(like Wallace and Darwin) that came to Southeast Asia and framed it
in their own perspective, but there were usually local experts
in the area who were guiding them. But obviously this body of scientific knowledge is not really attributed to their contributions.”
Jade Onn: Congratulations on your first solo exhibition: The Word for World is Forest! What was that experience of creating/having this exhibition like?
Khairulddin Wahab: Thank you! Technically, it’s kind of my second [exhibition]. I had a solo with UOB because I won UOB’s Painting of the Year award in 2018 and the winners usually get a solo in UOB—but this is my first solo in a commercial gallery setting!
JO: The name of this exhibition, “The Word for World is Forest”, references the Ursula K. Le Guin novel. Where or how did you first come across this novel and what was your first reaction to it?
KW: I came across it maybe last year because I have a partner who’s really into science fiction. So we were discussing science fiction, or just fiction in general, because I haven’t been reading a lot of fiction but I read a lot of academic stuff—it’s a bit weird but I enjoy reading theses because I like reading about ideas that are more… concrete, in a sense? It’s factual so you can grasp topics like sociology and anthropology. I’ve always wanted to read fiction, I like the idea of reading fiction, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. So one of the few books I was recommended was this book and I just kind of got into it and, after that, during the process of thinking about the title for the show, I just naturally thought of this title. Partly because some of the themes she [Le Guin] wrote about resonated with what I’m interested in. Themes like colonialism, environmental history, this whole Anthropocene, so I thought it was a nice kind of parallel.
I also thought the title had a nice ring to it. It’s not obvious, so there’s still room for someone to kind of wonder “what is this about?” It makes you think and I like that.
JO: When your partner first recommended that book to you, were you already interested in botanical, environmental history?
KW: Yeah, I’ve been interested in environmental history, anthropology, and stuff along those lines for the last two years. You know how when you do research you get into tangents and you just get lost in it? Sometimes you end up in a dead end and then you have to track back. So it’s a winding road of reading history, and then going into environmental history, and then thinking about these underlying reasons for why we deal with our environment the way we do today. I started to question our knowledge of the natural world and natural sciences, which are kind of rooted in this colonial world/enterprise of natural history.
Natural history is a very Western-centric kind of perspective (like Wallace and Darwin) that came to Southeast Asia and framed it in their own perspective, but there were usually local experts in the area who were guiding them. But obviously this body of scientific knowledge is not really attributed to their contributions. So this set in motion [my] thinking about how different things are framed in a way that is not truly reflective of the body of knowledge that the region (Southeast Asia) has produced.
JO: You mentioned that you’ve been interest in this for 2 years. What triggered the initial desire to explore this area?
KW: That’s a good question… I was looking at this particular Southeast Asian martial art-form called Silat. You’ve probably heard of it! I did a painting on that particular subject, but I was looking at Silat from an anthropological view in the sense that, when you think about Silat today, you think of a sport like how ASEAN games are sports. But there’s another whole aspect of Silat that has been lost because of modernization and all that.
If you look deeply into Silat, it’s actually a microcosm of the whole Malay culture. There are aspects of Silat like medicine, traditional healing, spirituality (usually the Silat guru doubles up as a spiritual guru so he also guides his students in spirituality and faith), martial arts (of course), and also philosophy. So there are these aspects of it that, especially in Singapore, have been totally lost because it’s not an attractive thing for people to get into or, because of the way urbanization happened, there is this lack of interest in this supposedly “primitive” art. So I was looking at it through that lens and I was interested in the mystical or spiritual aspects of Silat. Then I created this painting called Rite of Passage, which is what won UOB Painting of the Year, and it’s based on this ritual called Mandi Minyak, a ritual where they boil a cauldron of coconut oil and the students would line up, take some of it, and rub it on their bodies. So it’s a test of one’s… I guess faith and toughness? And I was interested in how this ritual basically encapsulates this whole mystical and spiritual aspect of Silat.
So that was the starting point for me, and then as I read more into Southeast Asian mysticism and spirituality, I naturally got veered into the natural world because much of Silat is derived from nature. For example, the moves are derived from animals and this aspect of traditional healing is rooted in traditional medicine based on local herbs or plants that have medicinal value. Then I started to realize that a lot of our cultural practices and material culture is derived from the natural world. For example, textiles are one that we always forget but which motifs are derived from nature.
Khairulddin Wahab, Rite of Passage, 2018. Acrylic on linen, 130 x 180cm. Photo courtesy of Cuturi Gallery. © Khairulddin Wahab
JO: That makes total sense because you were basically looking into indigenous knowledge behind Silat—and that actually ties into my other question which is: has your approach to exploring this subject changed over time? How do you decide on the direction you take with this process?
KW: I guess it depends on what attracts me, which areas of knowledge I feel drawn to. I just kind of veer towards it. Environmental history became my thing because I thought it was a strong umbrella for things that I could get into [while] at the same time reference a lot of other things. So I’m not just trying to paint trees (laughter). There are a lot of things relating to nature, different narratives that people don’t really know because it’s underneath the surface or esoteric in nature. So that’s what attracted me to environmental history.
It’s prevalent around us. The way we see nature is one aspect of it, but we don’t really think about it because it’s a lived reality and that was attractive to me because there are all these layers of meaning that I could tap into. It’s a rich body of research that I could work with.
JO: In doing all of this work, especially in the current climate of these past few years when eco-activism, environmental activism, has been experiencing more visibility in the media, do you consider your work in conversation with those forms of discourse and how do you see them engaging with each other?
KW: I’ve realized that as well! Over the past two years, there has been a lot of writing and talking about being more conscious of the natural world and how we value it… it’s become [part of] an international agenda. As a society, I think we’ve reached a point where we’ve realized we’re kind of messing up the whole eco-system and balance. There’s a re-emergence of an awareness of our environment and when I started this research, I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about the mystical parts of the natural world but it [the increased awareness of our environment] just kind of happened at the same time, coincidentally. So I guess the way my work engages with this discussion is perhaps on a more philosophical level.
The crux of my whole concept is this notion of disenchantment. Disenchantment, re-enchantment. It was first written about by Friedrich Schiller, and then Max Weber wrote a book called The Disenchantment of the World. Basically, this is rooted in the whole enlightenment era in the West and how rationalization became the de facto way of seeing the world. Sciences and philosophy became the drivers of progress, and mysticism and spirituality became seen as backward in a way because it wasn’t rooted in any “hard science”, so this whole idea of seeing the world is a significant feature of modernism in the West. So when, for example, colonialism came to Southeast Asia, it brought these ideals with them and, with that, it also manifested in the way they treated the environment. Colonialism brought about cash crops, for example. There’s this whole philosophy of seeing the land as something to extract from. There’s this monetization of the land and the natural world, and this is one of the things that disenchants the land and I’m interested in this notion of disenchantment, which ebbs and flows through different things.
For example, material culture. The society in Southeast Asia was animistic before religion came into the region, before colonialism, and animism is rooted in a reverence for the natural world. But after colonialism brought about industrialization, modernization, the sciences, it slowly disenchanted this mystical, magical, aspect of the natural world. Religions also brought about different ways of seeing the natural world and in my research, I was also seeing the different ways religions teach or frame the natural world in their contexts. For example, in the Bible, it’s framed as “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” [Gen 1:26–28] so it’s like you’re at liberty to gain or extract from the land because it’s a gift from god to us. While in Islam or another faith, it’s framed in a different way, so I was thinking about these different perspectives and these ideas that they contribute to this notion of disenchantment, this rationalization of the natural world.
JO: I feel like “disenchantment” is almost a little ironic given how I think a lot of people would describe your paintings as incredibly enchanting.
Khairulddin Wahab, Herbaria Sheet 4 After J.S. , 2021. Acrylic on linen, 61 x 46cm. Photo courtesy of Cuturi Gallery. © Khairulddin Wahab
KW: Yeah! So I’m taking something that’s disenchanted but re-enchanting it. There’s this cycle of disenchantment and re-enchantment because, in the process of disenchanting something, sometimes, you’re also re-enchanting it. For example, objects in a museum. When you take a vase from an indigenous culture and you put it in a museum, you are disenchanting it from its original context. Perhaps there was a spiritual or mystical aspect to it. But at the same time, you are re-enchanting it because you give it objecthood. If [you take] a vase from a culture that uses it to pour water and [the culture] doesn’t think “this is a spiritual object,” when you put it in the context of a museum, you imbue in it this new enchantment. Something is lost but something is also gained at the same time.
This whole transition is fluid, You can disenchant and re-enchant something simultaneously, so that was my approach. I’m taking all of these things and using my practice as a painter to re-enchant them and, from those paintings, you then start to think about why it’s so enchanting, why it feels mystical. So I guess my role as an artist is intervening in the materials I use, working with archival images relating to any topic I’m interested in and using that as a base for my paintings.
JO: I love this idea of disenchantment/re-enchantment of the natural world. But what about yourself? In the process of doing all this work, were there any moments when you felt disenchanted or, on the flip side, were there any moments when you felt re-enchanted?
KW: So my source material is primarily archival and found images and I choose a particular image to work on based on what speaks to me. My painting is a product of me trying to highlight a particular feeling or an aspect of this certain image, trying to remove certain aspects of it that I feel are not necessary; adding something to it in order to re-enchant it through my painting.
I guess, with my paintings, it’s something that I enjoy and look forward to… but, some days, I do feel quite disenchanted when I’m stuck with certain parts. (laughter)
“…I visited the botany centre at the Singapore Botanic Gardens
and I found these botanical illustrations
by Juraimi bin Samsuri and I was captivated by them.”
JO: I’m really glad you brought up archival images because I wanted to ask you about the Herbaria after J.S. series of 4 paintings in your exhibition. Why did you want to create and include this series? Was there a specific reason or purpose?
KW: Part of my interest in herbaria is rooted in taxonomy and I see taxonomy as another form or tool of disenchantment because, when you remove plants and you taxonomize them, you categorize them, you are looking at it from a natural science lens and it becomes an object that you press and you document and you file. So I was doing research on it and came across this practice of herbaria, the practice of preserving and studying plants, and I visited the botany centre at the Singapore Botanic Gardens and I found these botanical illustrations by Juraimi bin Samsuri and I was captivated by them. On one level, they are very artistic, very well done, beautiful, but on another level, there is that disenchantment/re-enchantment going on.
This herbarium sheet series also partly incorporates my other influence, which is textiles. You noticed there are some textile patterns on them, right? The motifs of textiles are derived from the natural world and I was thinking about textiles as an embodied form of disenchantment. At the same time, it is also a form of re-enchantment because when you look at, for example, batik or ikat, people make garments out of it and something is lost, but you also gain something out of it. They become fashion so you look at it and, on a certain level, it becomes a nice dress, it’s a nice pattern, but the meaning of these motifs or the reason behind certain colour choices is lost or eroded.
Also, reflecting on my own context, textiles are such a rich form of Southeast Asian tradition but it is often consigned to cultural wear and, with fast fashion and all that, textiles become recyclable and it becomes a… vapid disposable thing. So I was looking at textiles as material culture and, even today, I don’t see a lot of people wearing these traditional textiles so I was looking at textiles anthropologically and how it embodies this whole notion of disenchantment and re-enchantment. I also got really interested in the motifs and one of the motifs I was particularly interested in is called Pucuk Rebung, which translates to “bamboo shoots”. It’s a triangle motif – I have it in one of my paintings, actually – and I realized that the meaning is so deep because the triangle is divided into three levels and each level denotes a different plane of reality in the Malay imagination. God occupies the top [level], then there’s the spiritual realm, and then there’s the physical realm. And I have actually seen this motif around a lot – even in ethnic architecture, it’s used a lot – but I never really thought about what it means because, to me, it was just a design. Just a triangular design. So when I was researching deeper philosophical and spiritual meanings, I got influenced by that and I tried to incorporate the symbolism in my work. So even the way I paint (technically) is partly influenced by textiles… Sorry, what was the question again (laughter)
JO: Actually, you answered a bunch of questions I haven’t even asked yet! But the previous question was about why you wanted to create this Herbaria after J.S. series?
KW: Ah, yes. Ok so this is a body of science that is dead. Literally. And there’s the notion of disenchantment and re-enchantment that flows through it. I guess, for me, it’s about seeing a way to re-enchant the herbaria sheet by imbuing it with textiles motifs and seeing how I can re-present it [by] adding another layer of meaning to it. Changing something that is dry and scientific into something enchanting, re-enchanting.
“I’m very interested in creating patterns
the way someone making textiles would be.
So the way I approach painting
is by starting to think about the patterns I want to make,
textures I want to create, and those would be the base of my work.“
JO: I think you kind of already answered this just now but my follow up question is: why did you choose linen as the medium for your Herbaria series?
KW: That’s a good question… Technically, painting wise, [with] the way I approach painting, the surface of the canvas is very important to my practice as a painter because the way I start a painting is by creating textures and patterns before layering subsequent images. Usually, the different weaves, the warp and weft of the canvas or linen, produces different textures and I discovered this through experimentation. I realized that I could get different textures from different kinds of linen or canvas. So with this linen that I got [for the Herbaria series], it produces a particular texture that I really like. If you look at the painting, there’s a granular texture to it and I tried to use it as a pattern or background for the work.
I’m very interested in creating patterns the way someone making textiles would be. So the way I approach painting is by starting to think about the patterns I want to make, textures I want to create, and those would be the base of my work. Then, I’ll add more layers and I like to use or play around with positive and negative spaces when creating an image. In a lot of my paintings, you can see a lot of the first layer, and then I play around with all the layering. So this also draws back to the art of creating textiles because, with textiles, you depend on positive and negative spaces as you’re limited in your ability to create images with weaving and especially wax resist printing.
Khairulddin Wahab, Herbaria Sheet 2 After J.S. , 2021. Acrylic on linen, 61 x 46cm. Photo courtesy of Cuturi Gallery. © Khairulddin Wahab
JO: So I couldn’t help but notice, in another painting of yours, Till The Ground, there’s the idea of herbaria in it as well.
KW: Yeah! Part of the idea to create this herbarium sheet series is actually derived from that painting. So if you see the arrangement of those [Herbaria] paintings in the gallery, it’s actually in the same arrangement as the arrangement in that painting, with three below and one on top.
JO: OH.
KW: So this painting of an agricultural botany class is actually based on an image I found in, I think it was Indonesia, as you can see from the dressing. Again, I was seeing taxonomy and botany as disenchantment because you demystify the natural world to learn how to, you know, grow better crops. So the mystery, the magic, of growing a plant is demystified. It becomes a scientific, technical, view [of plants], but there’s all this ethnobotanical meaning that is sometimes lost.
For example, certain plants have spiritual meanings behind them. There’s a plant that is the Indian jujube and, in Arabic, it’s called Sidr. It’s quite significant in Islamic faith and in Southeast Asia because this plant is mentioned in the Quran as a plant from heaven and it’s one of the few plants that are explicitly mentioned in the Quran so it has a very strong spiritual and medicinal meaning behind it. It’s often used in traditional medicine to heal different ailments or even to ward off bad spiritual energy. I actually have this plant in my studio and I’m collecting it for its ethnobotanical meaning so, yeah, I’m very interested in this aspect of plants.
JO: The other thing about Till The Ground is, obviously, those human figures and you alluded to them just now but how did/do you conceptualize the role of humans in your paintings? And how do you perceive the relationships between humans and nature, on the one hand, and the relationships between humans across a shared natural history, on the other? For example, the relationship between someone looking at Till The Ground today and the people that those figures in the painting are based on.
KW: Let’s see… I guess the figures in my paintings play a role in the ideas that are embedded in the paintings. Generally, for most of the figures in my paintings, I didn’t really want them to have personalities. So that’s why you may notice that they are usually a bit obscured or almost invisible. They’re just silhouettes of people because I wanted the idea that all of us are clean slates and, through education and lived experiences, we gain all this knowledge. So, for Till The Ground, you can only identify [the figures] by the clothes they wear but, without that, they could be from any time frame.
To someone looking at this painting, I would say that perhaps this kind of relationship with the natural world has always been around, and the legacies of these relationships still ripple across time. Because of how certain things happened in the past, we still frame the way we see the world through those same lenses. Through our education and modernization, we’ve accepted certain ways of seeing the world, and it’s often a Western-centric lens. So then there’s this whole body of traditional and local knowledge that’s not really seen, or it’s slowly eroding, because Western and modern medicine are seen as the way forward for us, while traditional medicine is seen as something that is on the periphery of medical science.
For me, to show these hidden narratives that we are disenchanted with is to re-orient the gaze from what we’re used to, to reflecting on our Southeast Asian context. As someone living in Singapore, the relationship with the natural environment, to me, is so in-flux because the natural environment here is natural but, at the same time, unnatural. For example, Singapore’s urban policy on “the city in a garden”. It actually shifted from “garden city” to “city in a garden”. If you look into it, there is this shift in the way the government re-oriented how they see the natural world. So I also think about me as a Singaporean and my relationship with the natural environment.
For example, rain trees are not native to Singapore but, in the international imagination, the image of Singapore is very much tied to rain trees because you see them lining up the roads everywhere. So I was thinking about rain trees and I was thinking about how there are no rain trees in our primary forests because they don’t belong there. They’re there because they were planted by colonialists in the late 18th century to provide shade from the sun. The traveller’s palm was also brought by colonialism from Madagascar as an ornamental plant. When we think of Singapore, we think of Gardens by the Bay, MBS, and I also think of the traveller’s palm because of the tourism campaigns, so there’s this subconscious connection that we make and I was thinking about the unnatural notion about the natural in Singapore.
Khairulddin Wahab, Till The Ground , 2021. Acrylic on linen, 120 x 150cm. Photo courtesy of Cuturi Gallery. © Khairulddin Wahab
JO: So you shared a lot about your artistic practice and, when sharing about the technical aspect, you talked about mediums, textiles and patterns. After having worked on The Word for World is Forest, do you have any plans for how you might be exploring those different mediums and textiles even more?
KW: I’ve actually been thinking about tapestry. Just imagining my paintings, but in tapestry form.
JO: Wow, so you’re planning on learning to weave?
KW: Oh I’m not planning on learning how to do it! I meant working with someone to do it because the learning curve for learning to make tapestries is really steep (laughter). I was thinking of different vehicles to explore this idea and the possibility of actually creating this textile of tapestries, incorporating my paintings, embodying them into the creation of these tapestries so that, instead of painting on it, the tapestry is the painting.
Because of COVID restrictions, I’m unable to go to Indonesia to work with people who make these textiles so, right now, I’m just communicating [with them] online but it is something I’m hoping to explore more. I can imagine making an installation piece using such textiles. Instead of textiles hanging on the wall, perhaps they can be presented in a different way. A more immersive type of presentation.
JO: So you imagine this as not just an exploration of mediums but an exploration into collaboration?
KW: Yeah, I’m really hoping to be able to travel to Indonesia to explore, meet and work with the communities there who actually make these textiles. It’s an area that I find very fascinating and I would like to do something with that.
JO: One final question: after all this research and work that you’ve done for The Word for World is Forest, did you pick up on any new ideas or tangents for future works (in textiles or otherwise)?
KW: I guess I’m still [invested] in this whole disenchantment/re-enchantment thing but, in future work, perhaps I’ll find a way to explore and represent it through a different aspect. Right now, I’m looking at it through botany and taxonomy and history, but there are other aspects to it that maybe I haven’t thought about. For example, I kind of touched upon cartography but I didn’t really go deep into it.
In my exhibition catalogue, there’s an essay by Tony O’Dempsey and he’s a cartographer and a land surveyor. He created these maps that show the different stages of land use in Singapore and he likes to incorporate these whimsical graphics or cartoons in his maps. The essay is called “Putting the ‘Art’ Back in Cartography” and, in the past, people would incorporate pictures of sea creatures into their maps. That was a way for the cartographer to have a bit of fun but, obviously, maps these days are very much scientific and serious exercises. So [O’Dempsey] puts these fun little creatures back in his maps.
“The crux of my whole concept is this notion of disenchantment.
Disenchantment, re-enchantment.”
A recent implant from Singapore via New York, Jade Onn is currently pursuing her MA/PhD in English Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in an attempt to further articulate the circulation and rhetorics of Singaporean anglophone literatures. In her free time, she indulges in plant propagation and nostalgia.
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