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The Twilight Zone, Brunei
Ever since I entered Brunei through the sea, a country that was split into two geographically, close to the equator, extracted petroleum, the fourth wealthiest country in the world, and still maintaining the political structure of a sovereign state, I couldn’t help but feel something lively was missing. It felt as if one was on set for “The Truman Show” where cars didn’t honk their horns, alcohol and sexual desires were prohibited, the display racks at the stores were always neat and organized, all the streets in the country were clean, and the society lived harmoniously and disciplined. As if all things were playing out according to the script written by the king of Sudan – “Good morning, good evening, and good night.” The only thing lacking was the ocean backdrop and not having a star crashing onto the ground like the movie. The line in the movie kept lingering in my mind:
Was nothing real? You were real. That’s what made you so good to watch.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon and the clouds were so still that they looked like they belonged on wallpapers, the blazing sun was disorienting. Amidst the sphere shaped lake stood the unbelievable Masjid Omar ‘Ali Saifuddin. As the crowd started to fill up the temple you could hear the muezzin summoning devout Muslims to prayer from the minaret (ةنذئم in Arabic it means lighthouse). The broadcasted voice of the muezzin was loud and elongated, paused from time to time after some continuous chant. Being in “The Truman Show” like place listening to the few minutes of the summoning speech made it hard to tell what was reality in front of me.
Amiel with the White Hat, Kota Kinabalu
The Masjid Negeri Sabah was built in 1977 located just south of Kota Kinabalu, it was one of the three main masjids in Sabah along with City Mosque and Masji Putra. It was located near by both the airport and the museum, after passing through a white long carved railing one could find multiple entrances, near by was the hive shape dome and the minaret, north of the masjid is a mausoleum that contained the deceased governors. There were sixteen gold plated domes and the outside walls covered in Quran along with the hexagon patterns were all classic Islamic architectural designs, in contrast with the pigeon gray main structure underneath shimmering with the warm golden light from sunset.
The young Muslim boy who turned seven this year was Amiel, he was of Indian decent, peeked at me from a hallway near by. I turned around and saw him wearing a white prayer cap smiling bashfully with a missing tooth; when I walked downstairs I met his mother whom said tenderly that she was there to pick Amiel up after his Quran studying class. Amiel then very politely held my hands, quietly chanted a phrase of prayers and lightly touched my forearm with his forehead.
Jerome and Tamparuli, Tuaran
On this day we departed Kota Kinabalu at 10 a.m. preparing to head north to Tamparuli to meet the local art groups. The transit system in the suburbs was indeed interesting. The majority of the buses were painted white with blue and black lettering ten-seaters, after confirming the destination with the driver we got on the bus, we waited ten minutes which turned into twenty minutes, after an hour the bus driver still had no intention of leaving which prompted some passengers to leave the bus. I attempted to communicate with the bus driver via physical gestures; he seemed to indicate wanting a full bus before departing.
We ended up sitting in the roasting bus for quite a while. As we endured the bumpy ride we drove pass the City Mosque along the airport ground access road for half an hour as the forest became more flourish we passed a legendary steel bridge that flooded every single time it rained, we finally arrived in Tamparuli. We followed the map to the Living Arts Centre, it was also the studio of the woodcut print group, Pangrok Sulap. These few simple two-story buildings sat behind the bamboo forest, camphor, plumeria, mangosteen and star fruit, looking like a vacation resort. You couldn’t hear the traffic from the roads; however, one could see the Sungai Tuaran very clearly, surrounded by the perfect Borneo atmosphere. The artist in charge was Jerome Manjat, he looked really youthful perhaps under 30, he enthusiastically introduced the place to us and then started sharing how the local artist groups used topic such as community building, studio workshops, and resistance literature and elevated their art by using the art work itself to elevate the living quality of the residents, they incorporated elements such as environmental awareness (wildlife protection), geography (protest against the building of the dam), political topics (political personnel and symbol, events in the news), and games (snake chess), all of their pieces were raw and powerful. Furthermore, due to the location of the studio a lot of the materials were hard to acquire such as large pieces of paper, printing equipments and such he and the other artists often got help from the residents such as using the weight of once body to transfer a wood-board carving creation onto a fabrics. Jerome received funds from the government, in turn has been extremely involved in the development of producing papers with banana leaves, hoping to promote natural resource upcycling and the sustainability of the community.
We shared different printmaking art from Taiwan, Japan and some other Southeast Asian countries also the paper making culture and specialty within those countries. It felt like no matter what questions we had Jerome’s voice always had such enthusiasm and earnestness, as we chatted on I realized it was an honest resonance that happened between artists, an artist’s promise to that original self and intent, it was extremely moving. In the end he tore out a section of the banana leave paper to me that was just about to be experimented on and expressed that one day he would like to check out Taiwan (the paper industry and the realm of arts and culture), revealed a great sense of wonder towards the world.