Last week I visited Instant Cafe Theatre’s new home – CHAI House, or Instant Cafe’s House of Art and Ideas, an airy one-storey bungalow in Petaling Jaya. I grew up in PJ, and have a very soft spot for it, especially the beautiful gems of old houses you can find there. PJ has soul, and so does CHAI House! Represent. *Thumps chest*

With white paint fresh on the walls, the place was glowing with optimism and possibility. Rahel Joseph, formerly arts programmer at Galeri Petronas before its… shall we say, ah, unfortunate managerial changes, gave me a tour and low-down of the exciting things planned for this great new art space.

Welcome one and all! Rahel and CHAI’s front porch, both dressed in the white of new beginnings. Check out those great window grills. They don’t make them like that anymore.

~

Trees just planted in the garden. Courtesy of landscape architect and avid arts lover Ng Sek San. A tree makes such a great gift, don’t you think? The other garden on the left side of the house is going to be used for outdoor performances.

~

CHAI’s office space, where ideas get brewed. You can see the creative chaos is already growing, like a little jungle of stuff. It’s a big space with plenty of room, so people who need a place to work on something are welcome to occupy a desk for a period of time.

~

“Make sure you take a picture of the light!” Rahel insisted. It’s a cute light, isn’t it? The sweet old TV is Shooshie Sulaiman’s work for CHAI’s upcoming inaugural exhibition. Each month, CHAI invites guest curators to create a programme (consisting of exhibitions, performances, talks, forums, fun chaos, etc) ‘around any one of the great themes of modern life – both profound and trivial’. The first theme in conjunction with the opening of CHAI is pretty apt: ‘HOME’. I personally want to do a month on ‘FOOD’.

~

I love the window grills so much I have to give you a detail shot of them. They are like waves in the ocean.

~

Cute little kitchen. How bad do you want to live in this house?! Love how the tiles just stop halfway up the wall on the right. It’s like ‘oh, we ran out of tiles. That’s ok, let’s make it look like we did it on purpose by fashioning this here funky pattern’.

~

Some lucky people DO get to live here. One of the spacious bedrooms (with ensuite bathroom) is allocated for resident artists. At the moment two theatre performers from Australia are staying at CHAI.

~

The house is full of neat corners and strange angles. This spot is perfect for hanging out and having drunken (or not so drunken) conversations.

~

A small but sure-to-grow art resource area/library.

~

The large and sunny main ‘living room’ area opens into the ‘dining area’. An interesting and intimate space for exhibitions/performances.

~

An Alice In Wonderland pop-up book is kept on the table near the entrace. CHAI house has followed this conceptual model very closely. Instead of a boring vision and mission statement, CHAI can just hand this book over to journalists.

~

Hey, these gates are always open! (Well, except at night, and when there’s no one home, because it is dangerous to do that). So see you at CHAI House soon.

~

CHAI House (Instant Cafe House of Art and Ideas)
No 6, Jalan 6/3, off Jalan Templer, Petaling Jaya

Tel/Fax: (03) 778 48792
Email: chai AT instantcafetheatre DOT com

For further details on CHAI House, please contact Rahel Joseph at raheljoseph AT gmail DOT com or 012 281 0783.

~

And finally, as an added bonus, here is the awesome flyer that Sidney Tan (of Blue Karipap fame) drew for CHAI, with hilarious captions by Kam Raslan. Click on image for full size.