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04/22/2005: "The Forgotten Side of History" by Jose Freitas Cruz
For some time I had been thinking about a subject matter for a common project that might appeal to enclavians and foreigners alike. Something simple. Nothing as complex as Globalization and Individuality, or as potentially controversial [for our Islamic friends] as Progress and Tradition; and definitely nothing as childish as The Rainforest, or The River. In fact, none of the usual eco-friendly stuff so much in vogue these days and easy to work on [especially if you are surrounded by the stuff and you’re watching it being torn down daily]. That would be far too obvious and run the risk of being slightly clichéd. I wanted something unexpected that might actually force us all to research a little because of how simple and basic it was.I toyed with the idea of restaging the boat theme I had organized in Lisbon back in 2000, but I couldn’t seem to bring the idea together again. I certainly didn’t want them to come up with an actual boat. Besides, boats appealed to me but would it be a project they would want to embark on?
I looked at it from different angles. My fixation was linked to my childhood, that much I knew. Before I was two years old I was taken by my parents on a journey around Africa where my father held several postings. In those days such long journeys were still made by sea, and people still had the time to reach their destinations. I have a few, brief, ‘snapshots’ left in my head but I’d have a hard time telling you where exactly they are from and I probably only really started to get a clearer picture on the last leg of the journey, shortly after my sixth birthday. The strongest of these is a feeling I have never managed to shake-off: sailing back to Europe on a ship from Madagascar I remember standing at the starboard railing gazing into the vastness of the Indian ocean; there’s a vision of flying-fish darting alongside the ship, the smell and touch of salt on the railing and a feeling of being filled with longing for what may lie beyond the horizon - something I somehow felt close to but was being pulled away from by forces beyond my control. To this day I still feel the scope of my vision narrow as the ship sailed north, up the Red Sea towards the Suez. By the time we sailed into the Mediterranean I had lost my ability to look beyond the horizon. It is perhaps from those times that I have retained a fondness for Africa and curiosity about Asia where I sensed horizons would also be broad. And now, many years later, I find myself living on the other side of those thoughts, yet still thinking of boats and what lies beyond. Fate? Destiny? The result of an act of will? Sheer banality is rather more likely! At any rate it still did not justify calling on artists to join in a collective project. If I wanted to suggest the boat I would have to go deeper than an ego-centred whim.
There was Magellan of course – that seemed like a reasonable common-denominator. But I wasn’t too certain about the exact historical facts and the few scattered elements I was able to find were probably coloured by the interpretation I was led to believe in having grown up in the west.
Magellan’s fleet [without Ferdinand who had been murdered in the Philippines] arrived in the bay of Burunei in 1521 and was greeted by a magnificent collection of gilded vessels that had sailed downstream from the water-village bearing gifts from Sultan Abdul Kahar, an occasion the enclavians have proudly registered in some works of art from the past [at the time the Sultan ruled over the entirety of Borneo and parts of present-day Philippines and Indonesia]. Surely this would have been enough to justify calling on artists to work on such an apparently trivial theme. The meeting of two great civilizations with all the promise and disillusionment it always entails for both sides, provides abundant inspiration for artistic creativity – much is lost, yet so much can be gained. However, whereas you and I would probably interpret the occurrence as an achievement of western civilization our enclavian friends most likely see it from a different perspective and stand on the other side of [commonly accepted] history. Could it not be that the depiction of these boats meeting in such splendour is rather an homage to those days of former glory and to the graciousness of the Sultan, only a short while before being attacked and subdued by a foreign power? One historical fact, two irreconcilable interpretations. Not an auspicious common-denominator after all.
The temptation to allow my own work to follow along that trail has always been menacingly close [I am after all Portuguese and find myself on this island 500 years later, almost]. However, as an artist I tend to turn away from the more obvious solutions that all too often prevent the vision of the deeper and more meaningful approaches that must also be looked into. The last thing I wanted was to invite artists to remain at the level of superficiality. I had thirty artists in mind whom I wanted to call on and who I knew were capable of going much deeper than this and coming up with the goods.
Instead of establishing parameters and limiting the scope of the artists’ creativity I worked the other way around. I presented them with the vaguest suggestion of a boat – it simply wouldn’t leave my mind – but I set no limitations or guidelines other than that the last thing I wanted to see was the actual boat. It sounded odd at first and the project met with some resistance [they all very much wanted precise guidelines] but by early February, twenty of the selected thirty had signed up and the boat project was underway.
‘[X?] artists – one boat’ as the project became known, set out to explore the different significance each artist attributed to the vessel itself, beyond its known form, beyond its common purpose, reaching closer to the essence of the idea – X being a variable dependant on who stayed on course.
[Still deeper dimensions of X I discovered: To borrow the words of Octavio Paz “we are treading where we have never been, at the meeting place of this and that, here and now. WE are the crossroads, the X, the marvellous windmill that multiplies us, and questions us. The windmill that upon turning draws a Zero: ideogram of the world and each one of us…’’. But most importantly, and prosaically, X was the way I found to relieve myself of unnecessary stress and organise everything months in advance - invitations, catalogues, texts, press releases - without having to alter things if one of the twenty did not come through at the very last minute; a very common variable in the enclave.]
The closing paragraph of the exhibition catalogue [generously sponsored by printers Aliaa Csi] read as follows:
‘Inevitably we all feel the pull of familiarity calling us back to harbours where we feel secure. The artists will have fought it in their endeavours to go beyond known horizons and create the works they have brought forth, and the public will experience it, hopefully, when confronted with some of the more unorthodox representations. Hopefully, because it is out of this ‘discomfort’ that new ideas spring forth for the artist and a new understanding becomes available to the audience, and in the end this is what Art should be about.’
Three pieces stand out from among the final 15 and I would like to expand on them because they reflect the freshness of what has been achieved for the very first time in the enclave – an interdisciplinary exhibition that exceeded, I believe, everybody’s expectations.
Pengiran Timbang, possibly the enclave’s leading contemporary artist, presented a three-dimensional mixed-media piece entitled ‘Lost’ that hung from the ceiling. Using wood, threads, wire and pegs (the kind you use to hang up clothes to dry), ‘Lost’ took you on a journey upstream, back in time, and revealed that there still is a living link between the reality I have described to you in previous blogs, strongly shaped by Islam, and the pulsating riches of traditional roots that lie dormant in the immensity of the jungle… but run a serious risk of being lost forever.I will let Marol, one of the enclave’s promising younger artists, describe in his own words the second piece entitled ‘Bridging Bonds’ [mixed media on plywood]:
‘I come from a large family that originates from kampung ayer [the water-village], a community well-known for its affinity with the sea. Though many kampung ayer residents have moved on land, through fishing, the sea remains close to their hearts. An affinity that continues even though fishing to us is nothing more but a weekend recreational activity nowadays.
The sampan [boat] in my work represents the bridge that provides the bond between the elements Man, Sea and Fishing, a relationship that goes much deeper than outsiders could comprehend.Even though I do not take fishing seriously, the activity shapes my outlook on life in general. More importantly, to me, fishing cultivates a sense of cooperation among its practitioners as they work together to pull in the net and remove the catch in a friendly and harmonious atmosphere – something that is gradually disappearing from our society’.
The last piece I want to mention in this blog is a video installation by a promising young artist/filmmaker from the Philippines, Glenn B. Cruz, entitled ‘Enrique’s Repair Shop’. This remarkably well researched and well executed installation was, in the end, the element that brought the whole project together in more ways than one.
On a screen, footage captured by the artist runs continuously in a loop: boats taxiing people between the kampung ayer and the mainland; shots of the artists working on the pieces that could be seen alongside the installation; boats left to rot at the side of the road; glimpses of jungle and mangrove swamps; fishing nets and fishing activity; images of hands attempting to make paper boats; paper boats sailing down the river, awkward and flimsy…Behind the screen, arranged in [composed?] chaos on a stretch of wall, images of blueprints and technical details of various types of boats and floating devices were accompanied by a startling text – a text that revealed a forgotten side of history.
I will stop here, these artists’ contributions to this project are more important than any words I still might feel compelled to add. Their work contradicts the false impression I was fed four years ago that there was no real artistic impulse left in the enclave, and this was what I had set out to do - that was my project. But I will leave you with parts of Glenn’s text and to ponder perhaps on how much more history we have collectively agreed to forget:
‘Enrique of Malacca [or ‘Henry the Black’, or Enrique de Molucca] may be historically significant as the first person to circumnavigate the world. He was never to be honoured for so doing. Henry was the slave and interpreter of Magellan to the natives of the Philippines.
It is a subject of dispute as to whether he is originally from Sumatra in Indonesia, Malacca in Malaysia or Cebu in the Philippines. He has been given the appellation of Panglima Awang in the novels of the Malaysian Harun Aminurashid. He is also the centre of a dispute over circumnavigation: His circumnavigation in 1521 in the Philippines, or Elcano’s in 1522 in Spain.
The source of information on the career of Enrique Melaka is Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s chronicler: He was captured from Sumatra (then known as Zamatra) at the age of 12 to 18 in 1511 and became a slave to Ferdinand Magellan when Magellan was in the Moluccas in expeditions under Diogo Lopes Sequeira and Afonso de Albuquerque, when the Portuguese were colonizing parts of Malaysia and Indonesia.
The first leg of Enrique’s circumglobal voyage brought him to Spain with Magellan. Magellan later died in a battle in the Philippine Islands [having achieved only half of his circumnavigation]. Pigafetta writes that after Magellan’s death Enrique was legally free, but his manumission was opposed by the new commander, Duarte Barbosa. Enrique then plotted with Rajah Hamubon and was able to escape:
After Magellan’s death at Mactan, Duarte Barbosa treated Enrique harshly and then sent him on another mission to Hamubon the chief or datu of Cebu. It was here that Enrique supposedly suggested to Hamubon that they invite the Spanish to a feast and slaughter them. In any case, a banquet was had and all who attended were killed except Juan Serrano [who was left on the beach screaming not to be left behind.]’
…
Thanks to all the artists for treading where we had never been and meeting me at the crossroads: Chew Lean Im; David Kelly; Glenn B. Cruz; Herwig Bayerl; ak Ishakkumar; Lena Bosch; Osman Mohammad; Marol; Omarali Mahari; Pengiran Timbang; Sandra Roenelt, Saija Wan; Siti Kaprawi; Valeria Thomson.
