Sim Chi Yin
Interventions: Parachutes
2018
Print on hahnemuhle photo rag
91cm x 61cm
Interventions: Interrogation
2018
Print on hahnemuhle photo rag
91cm x 61cm
The two prints that Sim presents in Cast But One Shadow are part of her ongoing research project titled One Day We’ll Understand (2015-). The project examines historiographies of the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) informed by a search for answers to her grandfather’s execution during this period. The Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war between British and Commonwealth troops and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the Malayan Communist Party’s (MCP) armed wing. It was a protracted conflict that ensued in the jungles, plantations, and villages of the Federation of Malaya. The MNLA fought for the independence of Malaya from the British Empire, designating the conflict as the “Anti-British National Liberation War.” Meanwhile, the British categorized it as an “Emergency” to underwrite insurance claims, since London-based companies did not cover costs arising from civil wars. The MNLA had an overwhelming Chinese membership, having gained the support of the ethnic Chinese population who lived impoverished lives at the outskirts of the cities.
As part of the research behind her project and for the production of these images, Sim mined the British Imperial War Museum’s archive for the few images of the “communist insurgent.” She photographed prints and the negatives of images in the archive, merging verso and recto onto the plane of her image, bringing to light the annotations that have over the years defined these images and the positions they sought to represent. Scholars such as Max Houghton have credited this aesthetic strategy as laying bare “the operative logic of the colonial archive.”
Sim’s “exposure” of the annotations on the photograph surfaces the idiom of the British propaganda that framed this anti-colonial struggle and invested discursive weight on words such as “banditry” and “emergency.” Sim’s series illuminates the complex narratives of this conflict which became the blueprint for combating insurgency around the world, playing a role in the Vietnam War as well as in other campaigns such as the British villagization schemes in Kenya.
Elia Nurvista (b. 1983) is interested in exploring a wide range of art mediums with an interdisciplinary approach and focus on the discourse of food. Through food, she scrutinizes power, as well as social and economic inequality in this world. In 2015 she initiated Bakudapan food study group with colleagues from different disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy. Bakudapan is guided by principles of complementarity and camaraderie between the members. With Bakudapan she has conducted research on food within socio-political and cultural contexts. She has participated in several exhibitions including Dhaka Art Summit (2020), Karachi Biennale (2019), and the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at QAGOMA in Brisbane (2018), among others. She also curated The Biennale Jogja XVI: Equator #6 (Indonesia and Oceania) (2021); ADAM LAB at TPAC (Taipei Performing Arts Center) with Transient Collective (2020); and the solidarity platform Land, Water, Farming, Food: Struggle for Sovereignty, initiated by Bakudapan and Bodies of Power/Power for Bodies (2020/2021). She lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
2018
91cm x 61cm
2018
91cm x 61cm
As part of the research behind her project and for the production of these images, Sim mined the British Imperial War Museum’s archive for the few images of the “communist insurgent.” She photographed prints and the negatives of images in the archive, merging verso and recto onto the plane of her image, bringing to light the annotations that have over the years defined these images and the positions they sought to represent. Scholars such as Max Houghton have credited this aesthetic strategy as laying bare “the operative logic of the colonial archive.”
Sim’s “exposure” of the annotations on the photograph surfaces the idiom of the British propaganda that framed this anti-colonial struggle and invested discursive weight on words such as “banditry” and “emergency.” Sim’s series illuminates the complex narratives of this conflict which became the blueprint for combating insurgency around the world, playing a role in the Vietnam War as well as in other campaigns such as the British villagization schemes in Kenya.
