In America the use of blackface is cringe-worthy and condemned. In Malaysia it pops up everywhere…but what does it mean?

by Zedeck Siew

Obituary: Yasmin Ahmad, 1958 – 2009

The dreamer, her films I didn’t like, and why we will miss her.

By ARTERI

M.A.D dares to deliver the dangerous ddddddd D! The next installment in our Malaysian Art Dictionary. Come and join in the fun la.

by Haseena Abdul Majid

There is a quiet sense of resignation to reality and dissatisfaction with chaos in Haslin Ismail’s recent exhibition Exorcismus Persona at RA Fine Arts. His surrealist approach covers various mediums, from painting, assemblage, mixed media, installations and handmade books.

by ARTERI

Political analyst Wong Chin Huat has just been detained under the Sedition Act, for his writing and for initiating the 1Black Malaysia campaign. The aim of the campaign was to get all Malaysians to wear black on 7 May, in protest against Barisan National’s apparently unconstitutional take-over of the Perak state government.

by Lydia Chai

There is a famous moment in Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth century novel, The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, when the character Yorick dies and we the readers are then confronted with an entire black page.

This odd literary device might elicit laughter and amusement because of its simplistic representation of death, darkness, and fear of nothingness.

We might also think it poignant that the story’s long-winded narrator, Tristram, finds himself at a sudden loss for words and can only express his grief with a silent, dark page.

by Yusuf Martin

It is inevitable that we should consider the two, lightness and darkness, inextricably entwined, latter born of the former, each linked, for eternity, in bonds of the other.

It is from mysterious obsidian shadows that Rembrandt’s philosopher becomes enlightened, a tangled helix staircase revealed in all its wooden glory; three translucent brides evolving from Jan Toorop’s symbolic gloom, which of the light and which the sinister.

by Sharon Chin

Of all the openings I’ve been to (including my own), the one for The Light Show at Annexe Gallery last Thursday stands out as truly memorable. It was was the first time I’d seen so many people at an exhibition opening, ever. The energy in the air was palpable. It seemed like all the worlds of KL’s design, art, architecture and performance communities had converged in one place. It was awesome.

by Sharon Chin

I’m too misanthropic to believe that Earth Hour was much more than a massive, feel-good PR stunt. But as our house dutifully doused the lights during that stipulated hour on 28 March, I found that being plunged into a physical darkness was more welcome than I’d ever anticipated.

It inspired a series of posts on, above and/or around the idea of ‘darkness’. Thoughts on Darkness by various contributors will be released daily. As an introduction, I reproduce here an excerpt of a gmail chat I had with an artist friend in Yangon, Myanmar.