Tackling ‘Lush Fixations’ at Richard Koh Fine Art
By Ho See Wah

Nadiah Bamadhaj. Photography by Agan Harahap.

Nadiah Bamadhaj (b. 1968) is a Malaysian-born artist who is currently residing in Yogyakarta. She graduated with a double major in sculpture and sociology from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch and has been practising as an artist for almost twenty years. Bamadhaj works with various media across digital media, drawing and installations, and is well-recognised for her signature style of charcoal and collage drawings.

Looking across the oeuvre of her works, Bamadhaj is, at heart, a person that cares deeply and widely about humanity. Her focus is often on marginalised communities and histories as well as sensitive socio-political topics, such as her installation, ‘enamlima sekerang’ (2003), which speaks to the horrors of the 30 September 1965 massacre in Indonesia. This remains a sensitive subject for the country. For her exhibition, ‘Ravaged’ (2018) at Chamber Fine Art, New York, Bamadhaj focuses on the people she met while she was volunteering at Yogyakarta’s Transgender Extended Family, a shelter for trans- and cisgender people. Exhibited were raw and honest portraits of the people she interacted with superimposed against digital prints showing the everyday lives of the subjects.

Her sensitivity to her chosen subjects is evident from the research and fieldwork she conducts. She has also expressed doubt about whether she presents her own subjects accurately or if her own perspective is also a biased one. It is this self-interrogation that adds value to the work that she does, not just as an artist but also as an activist. The constant questioning has made her seek out more perspectives, more stories and more histories to tell.

Nadiah Bamadhaj, ‘Trophy To Your Fixation’, 2019, cast patina brass, 30 x 30 x 52cm. Image courtesy of RKFA and the artist.

In the same trajectory, her ever-evolving practice sees the artist attempting new things, as with ‘Lush Fixations’ (2019) at Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA), where Bamadhaj experiments with a new medium, cast patina brass. Apart from her brass sculptures, the artist’s charcoal and collage drawings are featured. The showcase is at once a celebration of sexuality and the denouncing of prudish attitudes, as embodied by the two media. Once again, we note an enduring constant in her long and varied artistic history, which is providing an avenue for the marginalised.

We interview Bamadhaj on the occasion of her solo exhibition in Singapore, ‘Lush Fixations’ at Richard Koh Fine Art, where the artist speaks on her motivations, beliefs and the socio-political contexts that she operates within. Her monograph, edited by Rosa Maria Falvo and written by Kathleen Suraya Warden, will be launched at the opening of the exhibition. Aside from documenting the artist’s processes, it is also a node in the wider network of Southeast Asian contemporary art history, and is a welcomed addition to the literature on this manifold and still-evolving subject.

Nadiah Bamadhaj, ‘Clitoria Precocious’, 2019, charcoal and collage on paper, 137 x 132cm. Image courtesy of RKFA and the artist.

For your show at Richard Koh Fine Art, ‘Lush Fixations’, you introduce a new medium, cast patina brass, to your solo show in addition to your well-known charcoal paper collages. Could you tell us more about this choice?
Casting something some time in my career was an inevitability. I studied sculpture in art school and cast bronze in my final year full-time. For me, I just picked up where I left off all those many, many years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed going back to my sculptural roots for ‘Lush Fixations’. Working in three-dimension utilises all my working instincts.

In fact, the two mediums have very distinct subjects. Your collages celebrate the human body, whereas the sculptures reveal obsessive taboos surrounding sexuality, such as ‘Clitoria Precocious’ and ‘Trophy To Your Fixation’. How do the two elements come into conversation with each other?
Within the context of where I live, and I believe for other places too, these two elements are constantly in conversation, or at odds with each other. Anytime there is an expression of sexuality that does not fit into a standard heterosexual male fertile stereotype, that expression will come up against the backlash of a staunch brigade that seeks to suppress all forms of alternate sexual expression by men, women and transgender people on the basis of “morality”.

To deconstruct what this “morality” means: it is any sexual expression that does not fit within the orbit of the reproduction of us as a species, the propagation of the heteronormative family unit. For me, it is the machine that generates patriarchal capitalism. Existing outside of these boundaries is a celebration that many people fear. It is as though sexuality is perceived as a pie chart. For example, an openly gay man will somehow erode the heterosexuality of another person. This is the ridiculousness of phobias of sexualities.

Exhibition installation shot of ‘Lush Fixations’ at RKFA, Singapore. Image courtesy of RKFA and the artist.

Your oeuvre offers social commentary and is permeated with the politics and histories of specific localities, such as from your birth country, Malaysia, or your current abode in Indonesia. Could you elaborate on the socio-political context for ‘Lush Fixations’?
‘Lush Fixations’ comes from a loaded socio-political context, but more so from where I live than where I was born. Indonesia has passed through two presidential campaigns this decade where sex and sexuality were the “whipping horses” of opposing political camps, with LGBTQ communities targeted as all that was morally wrong with Indonesian society. This happened alongside a growing conservative religious revivalism which seeks to define “normal” in what is historically a socially and sexually diverse society.

This has had staggering implications on revisions of law. Currently, Indonesia’s Dutch-inherited Criminal Code is being revised to the detriment of privacy and civil rights. Among some of the revisions are the further criminalisation of abortion to include women who have been raped, providing contraception to anyone under 18, i.e. unmarried youths who need it the most, consensual sex between any unmarried persons, cohabitating outside of marriage, and “obscene acts in public”, against which there will undoubtedly be another law used against LGBTQ. But the most baffling to me is the opposition to the proposed Eradication of Sexual Violence Bill.

A group led by upper middle class women in the religiously conservative parties in the House of Representatives, called the AILA or Family Love Alliance, has contested the anti-sexual violence bill based on their belief that the definition of sexual violence only includes the aspect of force as illegal. Therefore sexual acts made out of consent are, by omission, defined as legal, which conflicts with AILA’s definition of “religious and societal norms”. The movement is at its core opposed to body autonomy, consensual sex among adults and sexual orientation, as all these elements are not defined as sexual violence or illegal in the proposed bill.

What I take for granted as a core step in the right direction, specifically for women’s rights, is being contested by anti-feminist groups in current positions of political power. All these events, laws and revisions are creating an environment of suppression and fear, and it enforces an ignorance that will cause a rise in unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

‘Lush Fixations’ responds to the socio-political context of where I live and work, but consequently ‘Lush Fixations’ cannot be exhibited where I live and work.

Nadiah Bamadhaj, ‘Rumah Tinggal Sarang Hantu, Orang Bujang Sarang Fitnah (A House Left Empty is a Nest for Ghosts, A Person Who is Single is A Nest for Gossips)’, 2008, charcoal on paper collage and digital print, 75 x 120cm. Image courtesy of RKFA and the artist..

Do these socio-political strands have any intersections with your own personal history?
I have a work that I made many years ago, which I titled after an old Malay proverb, ‘Rumah Tinggal Sarang Hantu, Orang Bujang Sarang Fitnah’. It roughly means an empty house is an invitation for ghosts, an unmarried person is an invitation for slander. It’s really too much to get into, except to say that I found unmarried life exhausting. But I also acknowledge that marriage is an economic, social and political privilege only currently available to cisgender heterosexuals and designed as a form of state surveillance over the family unit, and therefore also flawed. But I love my husband to bits.

In your monograph, you mention that, in the Yogyakarta kampung you live in with your family, “I’m pretty sure I’m the only woman of means. It gives me an independence from the social systems.” How has this independence influenced your way of thinking and your artistic trajectory?
In Yogyakarta kampung life, these is a strong pressure to “participate” in all organised collective activities. This collective participation gives the façade of a harmonious community. But in actuality, this participation hides an underlying threat. Due to the high density of peoples in small spaces and the lack of policing power to cover such large populations, the task of security falls on the gotong royong systems in each kampung. A persons participation in kampung activities ensures their protection by these gotong royong brigades from break-ins and petty theft.

Understanding that I am an introvert with little tolerance for women’s kampung activities focused on cooking and childrearing, and that I’m the only woman in my kampung not wearing a hijab, my husband takes on the role of the participant, representing our family in our kampung.

This independence, which ironically is provided by my husband, does not influence my way of thinking and making art. I think it may be the other way round. My way of thinking about the social structures around me, and my interpretation of them in my work, reinforces my independence from them.

What are your motivations for producing works that focuses on marginalised groups?
My motivation for making works about these groups is that they are marginalised, and their stories need to be dragged a little closer to the middle, particularly if they are subject to persecution. Although making works about marginalised communities is a rich experience during the research process, the outcome is always fraught with doubt as to whether it is their stories I am telling or my biased interpretation of them.

Looking back at your almost-twenty years of being a full-time artist, do you have any advice for young artists?
I think it is an artist’s job to be different from everyone else. Therefore, the culture of mentorship that I’ve observed in both Malaysia and Indonesia never ceases to annoy me. I recall hearing a story, otherwise known as gossip, about a young female artist whose work, in my opinion, was progressing well and defining her visual independence. In comes the old boys’ network that starts dishing out advice to this young woman, who then completely changes the trajectory of her work, subject matter and scale, to the point that she ceases to be defined from her peers.

My advice to young artists is to listen to your own instincts. It is what makes you different from everyone else and will be the core of what defines you. Apply selective listening to everything else.

Lastly, are there any upcoming projects that you would like to share with us?
I would like to develop a new sculpture series in more depth on the subject of sex and sexuality, touching on the socio-political context previously mentioned.

‘Lush Fixations’ is on view from 25 October to 9 November 2019. The launch of the artist monograph will be held in tandem with the opening on 25 October.