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Art and Animals During COVID-19

“Art was what was truly permanent therefore what truly mattered. The rest was ‘but a spume of things / Upon a ghostly paradigm of things.’” Wendell Berry, What Are People For?

Wendell Berry’s lamentation is more poignant since the COVID-19 virus forced us into stultifying solitude. Confined to our homes, art viewing in galleries seem like a distant memory. Saskia Fernando Gallery in Colombo, Sri Lanka, fills this artless void with Art in Curfew. For their inaugural show, the gallery invited four Sri Lanka-based artists, Hashan Cooray, Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah, Fabienne Francotte, and Firi Rahman to create or curate a collection of work as a response to the forced hermitry. To enrich this virtual art experience, an open studio session on Instagram Live took place each Saturday, enabling the viewer a glimpse into each artist’s space, practice, and current projects.

It was through one of these open studio sessions that I discovered Firi Rahman. When I tuned into the Live session, Buddy, one of Firi’s parrots, greeted me with a loud squawk followed a succession of trills. During Firi’s walkthrough of his humble one-room abode that also dubs as his studio, we met the other creatures that live in his space. Besides Buddy, Firi is currently looking after other less vocal birds as well as a squirrel. Then Firi sat down and started to draw, using a Rotring pen with slow, circular motions to create the pattern of the dotted coat of a leopard. It’s a painstaking process, but the results are mesmerizing.

Left: Hornbill, 2018
Centre: Lemur, 2018
Right: Cougar, 2018
For inquiries: Saskia Fernando Gallery

In 2018, Firi made a series of pen-on-paper drawings depicting animals in urban settings. He was initially inspired by the four pet macaws that had fled their gilded cage inside the palace of the then Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. These bright, long-tailed birds are not native to Sri Lanka, and the elites had kept them as status symbols. On the other hand, Firi, a bird lover his whole life, has only kept birds to help them. He would free them as soon as they’re well or old enough to be on their own. The only ones he would keep are the ones that are born in captivity and would not survive independently in the wild. When he heard about the escaped macaws, he wondered where these birds would go in Colombo. As he started to imagine wild animals and what they would do in urban settings, he made a series of drawings. There is one of a hornbill sitting in a hefty, colonial-style wooden chair with its beak tilting in the air. He looks like a king summoning his subject for an announcement. Another drawing consists of two lemurs perched on the tiled roof of a house made of wood and corrugated iron. My favourite is the drawing of a cougar crouching on top of a dolly cart, looking down as if it regretted jumping onto the unstable surface in the first place. 

The cougar drawing reminded me of the puma that has been visiting the near-empty streets of the Chilean capital of Santiago. Since late March, the wild feline has been prowling the central district, looking disoriented and confused. It roamed through several private gardens and a school before it was tranquilized and sent to the wildlife officials. This adventurous puma is not the only animal venturing out of their homes. Since the advent of the COVID-19 virus, many creatures are found cruising the newly deserted cities around the world. In Paris, two bucks strolled down an empty road next to park cars. In Istanbul, dolphins frolicked in the Bosporus Strait that has recently become free of tankers, cargo ships, and tourist boats. In Adelaide, a kangaroo hopped around the heart of downtown in full strides.

I am envious that the animals are out and about in the world. Even the crows perched on the trees in my neighbrouhood are cawing to flaunt their freedom. It’s poetic justice—as the humans are under curfews or lockdown around the world, the wildlife is enjoying a quieter and cleaner world, reclaiming habitats that we once took away from them.

Before the pandemic, humans as a species devoured resources like bottomless pits. Our consumer society insisted that we needed more to be fitter, happier, and more productive. When I was having a bad day, I ate and drank my feelings while shopped online to buy joy. When the curfew started suddenly in Sri Lanka, I became trapped inside my home in a new country with no access to Amazon, Book Depository, or Etsy. I soon ran out of snacks and booze and no means of getting more. Then, I realized that the post services stopped, and I couldn’t order anything online. The first couple of weeks were miserable. But slowly and grudgingly, I realized that I don’t need nearly as much as I consumed.

In What are People For?, Berry quotes William Blake from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.” Berry responds with a quote of his own: “Only when our acts are empowered with more than bodily strength do we need to think of limits.”

These quotes reminded me of the differences between humans and animals. The escaped macaws freed themselves with their bodily strength. On the other hand, humans have insatiable desires beyond our physical needs, and we haven’t had the opportunity to contemplate our limits until we are cooped up inside with nothing but our thoughts. Many of us didn’t want to face this reality–but the pandemic has certainly forced it upon me. For me (as a privileged person who was able to work from home), I feel like this pandemic has given me a clean slate because it drove me to confront the way I worked, played, and consumed. Now that we are slowly emerging from a strict curfew, I feel like I have become more resilient both in body and in mind. I am ready to tackle this new normal while feeling fitter, happier, and more productive–this time, without succumbing to the endless distractions and the unquenchable desire to consume.

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Wan Chai Grammatica: Past, Present, Future Tense

Studying an acrylic painting of green shrub and concrete, Dewey Punk Pickles knows right away what she’s looking at—a pathway in Wan Chai she passes by during her morning runs to Victoria Harbour. Yeung Tong Lung’s brush strokes remind her of Cézanne’s obsessive and repetitive dabbing of paint. However, unlike Cézanne,  who took up to 100 work sessions to complete a still life, Dewey doubts this artist had put in as much effort.

Dewey is at Wan Chai Grammatica: Past, Present, Future Tense, an exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Wan Chai Arts Center, Hong Kong. Lately, she has attended many shows and openings to enhance her skills as an art writer. For a Hong Kong-based writer who doesn’t want to work in finance or PR; art writing is her best bet.

As a Wan Chai resident of almost seven years, Dewey is interested in how artists see Hong Kong from the past, present, and future. Looking at an acrylic painting by Galylord Chan, she recognizes that this is an image of Vicotria Harbour of Old Hong Kong— the low-rise, not-skyscraper buildings, the old-timey clothes hanging to dry, and the airplane flying near the mountains on the Kowloon side where the old Kai Tak airport used to be. Though she wasn’t alive in Hong Kong during that time, she’s seen enough of Fan Ho’s photographs to get a sense of what Hong Kong was like in the past.

Chan’s painting looks as though the viewer is viewing at the harbor from the mountains, and the artist uses child-like lines to render the cityscape, evoking a sense of innocence. However, there is a depth to it too, like the way the artist illustrates the stacking of concrete buildings in Kowloon to show its population density. Also, by placing a ferry in the middle of the painting, the artist highlights the importance of ferries in Old Hong Kong—before the MTR (the reliable and inexpensive transportation system of Hong Kong), people relied on ferries to get from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon and vice versa. These days, the Star Ferry that takes passengers from Wan Chai to Tsim Sha Tsui has become a relic from the past. Although Dewey thinks it’s romantic to ride the Star Ferry, she only does so when she is not in a hurry.

Harbour (1969) by Gaylord Chan.

Dewey looks at an ink and acrylic painting by Luis Chan that reminds her of classic Chinese ink paintings.  She’s always enjoyed the serene mountain scenes created by the elegant strokes of a calligraphy brush. This one before her is a modern take of an old form, a painting of hilly Hong Kong Island with the sea and Kowloon in the backdrop. There are a few buildings in the picture, but the hills are mostly bare, except for a crazy tree with blue, yellow, and red leaves. In the harbor are junk boats with crimson sails, and at the foot of the hills are some obscured figures— they look like they are carrying something.

Other objects that remind Dewey of traditional Chinese landscape paintings are over-the-top dioramas created by MAP Office.  She stops before a snow-capped mountain made of mini plastic palm trees covered in glue. All around the hills are soldiers wearing green uniforms and white helmets who have climbed towards the top using ropes secured by divers down below. The diorama depicts a scene of an invasion—the soldiers are storming around the Godzilla-like monster on the top of the mountain, trying to destroy it. Dewey thinks that this work shows the transition between old Hong Kong moving to a more contemporary Hong Kong.

Dewey’s favorite diorama is the landscape of seashells, fan-like corals, and a sand dollar covered in shiny pink beads, plastic palm trees, faux pearls, and female figures performing lewd acts. Some of them are lifting their skirts to show their asses; some are standing around naked sticking out their tits, others are sitting on the ground, submitting themselves to the male gaze. This glittery, pink world reminds Dewey of the neon lights on Lockhart Road, where young women from southeast Asia in short short skirts holler at Gweilos to entice them to stop for a drink.

Close-up of Wanchai Islands: Wanchai Colonies (2018) by MAP Office.

Dewey stands before Xyza Cruz Bacani’s photographs of street scenes of Wan Chai. They are typical scenes of the neighborhood: Laborers hanging out on the steps of the Southorn Playground, a Gweilo (Cantonese slang for a light-skinned European descent) passed out on the infamous Lockhart Road, (Wan Chai’s red light district), and a couple kissing on the crowded sidewalk off Johnston Road. The image that captured Dewey’s attention shows the closing of an iconic Wing Wah Noodle Shop in Wan Chai. The store sign made up of four Chinese characters were covered carefully with characters printed on white paper, “gloriously finished business.” Wing Wah had been serving tantalizing wontons noodles and mouthwatering braised pork knuckles for the last 68 years. She’ll miss Wing Wah’s wonton noodles, especially after a night out.

Dewey enjoys these images because it’s fun to identify the locations in her neighborhood. They are current, like something she’d see in her day-to-day life. However, in her mind, they lack that unique little details that make her love the photographs. Or, perhaps she’s too fixated on identifying the locations to find the details.

So far, Dewey has explored the past and the present of Wan Chai. However, the only object in the show that reflects any inklings of Wan Chai in the future tense is MAP Office’s aquarium tanks stacked on top of each other. There is nothing special about the tanks, except when she bends down to take a closer look.  Upon seeing at the construction projects outside of the window through the tank, Wan Chai has been turned into an underwater world inhabited by fishes. If the government and corporations don’t stop with the reclamation projects, Dewey thinks, we’d all have fishes as our neighbors.

Close up of Wanchai Islands: Wanchai Island (2018) by MAP Office.

There were a lot of artworks in the three-level exhibition space. There are photographs of Hong Kong skyline floating over a pint of beer by South Ho Siu Nam. There is an installation of leftover Indian food on banana leaves by N.S. Harsha, its realistic qualities grosses her out a little. There are more paintings, installations, and photographs, but after a while, her mind checks out.

Thinking back, Dewey wonders if Wan Chai Grammatica was an exhibition of quality. As a budding art writer, she needs to be analytical of her observations. She likes many of the objects in the show, though she is aware they are the ones she can relate to based on her own experience. She wonders if she would have enjoyed them if she didn’t live in Wan Chai. Also, she is also keenly aware that she hasn’t paid attention to everything in the show—there are just too many damn objects.

Yes, the exhibition makes an effort to show Wan Chai from the past, in the present, and what the future might hold, but, but Dewey’s not sure if the show has cast a new light on how she sees the city she calls home. Many of the objects illustrate Wan Chai’s multi-cultural identity and its colonial past. There are also some reflections on its seedy reputation and over-consumption. Many of objects also evoke a sense of nostalgia while documenting Wan Chai frozen in time. None of this is revealing or challenging though, Dewey thinks to herself. She’s not quite sure what deems revealing or challenging, but she’ll let you know when she comes across it.

 

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New Category: Art Writing and an Introduction to Dewey Punk Pickles

Guy Rose, The Green Mirror (1911). This painting shows my quest for learning to look at art objects, as well as myself, from different angles and perspectives.

Sometimes I feel uncomfortable and threatened at art exhibitions and gallery openings. I feel like a poser, pretending to enjoy something I don’t understand.

“I didn’t study art,” I think to myself, “I don’t know what I am looking at.”

Other times, I feel downright rejected by an object, but don’t know why. I am looking and trying to figure it out, but I always fail. I feel anxious, looking around at other people who seem to know exactly what they are looking at.

“This sculpture doesn’t want me to understand it. It’s an asshole.”

Lately, the works of Lynne Tillman, The Complete Madame Realism and Other Stories inspired me. I have also been reading a lot of other writers, such as Bruno Latour, Kathy Acker, and Chris Kraus.

These writers have challenged the way I look at art objects and how I write about them. As a writer, my instinctive inclination is trying to understand something and to write about it. In my In the Shadow of the Middle Kingdom thread, I explain things through storytelling. However, this strategy doesn’t seem to work with art objects.

Instead of trying to understand them, I decided to do an experiment and just let it be. Instead of asking, what is this supposed to tell me, I pose new questions. What is this making me feel, and why? What’s around it? Who’s looking at it? How is it displayed?

Lynne Tillman, a fiction writer, was asked to review different art exhibitions and cultural events. She created a fictional character, Madame Realism, and sent her to these exhibitions and events. The result is a collection of dazzling, humorous fictional essays that chronicles American culture.

Taking a cue from Tillman, I’ve created a character, Dewey Punk Pickles. For those of you who know me personally, you know that Dewey is the name of my beloved feral cat that I picked up on the streets of Dubai ten years ago. In my stories though, she is a person–she has a part of my history and my sensibilities (she is a writer who used to be a librarian at an art and design university), but she also has feline characteristics, like she curls up and goes to sleep, she purrs, she hisses, she might be bitey with her words.

This thread is an experiment, in my attempt to write about art in a way that is accessible and fun. I would love to hear about what you think. My first post in this thread is where Dewey Punk Pickles goes to see the Cao Fei’s A hollow in a world too full at Tai Kwun, a cultural hub in Central, Hong Kong. Please leave a comment or message me if you want to have a conversation! You can chat with me via my Facebook page.