The Sight Oracle: 05/30/2010

1. What was the response like at the opening? As expected? How did people react?

Raj: I am afraid everyone balked and scattered for a quick getaway. It was shocking to see grownups cry and exclaim loudly – ‘what rubbish!!’ But seriously, many were intrigued by my portrayal of an alternative early 1900s Malaya. There were scattered comments on the complexity of the visual cues in the paintings. In general the paintings invited the audience to decipher, to step in for a closer look at the fragments of text and images that I used to construct my narrative. Although many plain refused the invitation..

2. It is mentioned that Curio is heavily influenced by your time in Paris. Care to elaborate – how is this so? What was the experience like in Paris?

Raj: Apart from being titillated by the gregarious art scene in Paris (there was this artist who was always in a Castro uniform complete with a beard that stomped around in big army boots), I fell head over heels in love with print. Curio owes a lot to my love affair with screen printing. And Montparnasse is a place which every artist should visit to eat croissants, drink coffee, sit around and philosophise and occasionally make some art.

3. Also, could you kindly elaborate as to how the idea behind Curio is very much supported by your background in Math and Philosophy?

Raj: Hah… can’t get away from the two subjects even if I wanted to. That is what I do when I am not doing art and I guess it seeps in into my art sideways. It has something to do with epistemology and what can be known and how can we go about knowing it and alternative truths and that sort of stuff.

4. How do you combine the two disciplines– your math background and your creative side? Could you kindly elaborate please.
Raj: I don’t. Except when I ask questions pertaining to both mathematics and art. When you do both as much as I do, there are cross overs and the gap that builds up between the two starts becoming uncomfortable and confusing until you do something about it. I did and I have humanized my maths and altered my art in the process.

5. I’ve read the basis behind Curio – based on foreign press clippings on Malaysia – could you kindly elaborate more on this please.
Raj: There is a lot of freaky stuff that goes on around the world no more so then in Malaysia. Everything from crazy politics to record breaking structures, exotic sultanate, mindblowing flaura and fauna, amazing race mix and its accompanying shenanigans and better-than-fiction gyrations etc etc. The non-Malaysian press cannot come near to understanding the freakery of Malaysia. So they often get it all out of context and often the news reports of Malaysia sound like stories of some freak show on some savage unknown corner of the world.

6. What are your personal feelings on what is said in the foreign press about your home country? How have these transpired into your art? From how long ago have you based the clippings on / and what is the most recent clipping?

Raj: I have been living abroad for a long time - never out of touch with Malaysia. I know of many occasions when I have had a chuckle to myself reading some exaggerated news report on Malaysia which I use to go out of my way to find. A lot of what Curio is based on is fiction. I have created a fictitious early 1900s Malaya. I wrote fictitious newspaper columns, dreamed up powerful and highly secretive organizations that played a large role in this fiction complete with secret membership manuals and handshakes and conjured up imaginary Malayan human creatures that entertained the world through high publicized fictitious Freak Shows and circuses. And lots more. There is a mountain of material, all fiction, based on real documents from early Malaya that inform the series.

7. What does Curio celebrate and capture – Elaborate please.

Raj: It celebrates our difference. It celebrates alternative realities and hopefully captures everything and nothing in a sort of a Derridean universe.

8. The play of symbols, words and information in your pieces – what’s the purpose – purely intentional or otherwise?

Raj: Everything conspires to confuse and collaborate to build multiple narratives about Malaya and its many possible histories.

9. What are the issues that this collection focuses on – and why these?

Raj: I am not sure if I am grappling with any issues. I am interested in knowledge and the many ways I can balance or unbalance an equation.

10. Let’s focus on the technique used - could you elaborate how Paris played a role. Plus the techniques involved in creating your pieces.

Raj: There is a cacophony of techniques and processes and screens and fragments of material and layers that make for the final product. The journey, I assure you, is much more interesting than the painting that you see.

11. Why the focus on these particular towns – were these stopovers in your life’s journey? Why Setapak for instance? Which depicts Ipoh?
Raj: Why not? I know the journey from KL to Penang best from my child hood. I imagined that the paintings represented old 50 year walls I would find in these towns in my fictitious world.

12. Is each piece proclaiming the town or its living heritage since people seem to take center stage?
Raj: Nope.
13. The man in the turban – the Sikh figure appears quite prominently – why is this – does this have a connection with your particular heritage (I’m assuming you’re Sikh too).

Raj: He is my grandpa! He represents me, the voyeur, looking on, cashing in on the oddities of the universe around him.

14. The freak show – how do you envision yours and how does it play out?

Raj: Just like in my paintings - a mass of confusion masking the real deal if there is such a thing.

15. Why the weathered look of the pieces – what does it symbolize?
Raj: Old walls recently discovered with layers of discarded posters once proclaiming a land rich with freaks.

16. Why the use of glitter and varnish – what does that symbolize?

Raj: Glitter emphasizes the razzmatazz of my erstwhile world of freakery. Varnish protects my paintings.

17. How does one begin to uncover the layers of your work? What would you like your audience to discover in the core of each work?

Raj: I want them to discover what they want to discover. I do not want to tell them what to see and what not to see. Everyone will see the paintings differently and thank bejesus for that. Just the other day I entertained an art lover who was convinced that the paintings were about Malayan multi-racial history. Who am I to tell him otherwise?

18. You view the country and its goings on from across the border– you capture it in Curio – who are you – a Malaysian longing for home, or for how things used to be, politically, economically, socially?

Raj: Nope, none of that! I am just portraying it another way. And an artist at his best can only hope to reveal an alternative way of looking at things.

19. What does MOLC stand for?
Raj: It stands for whatever you want it to be.