Sunday September 19, 2010A painter of the timesBy ANDREW SIAHe’s not a political painter, the artist says, but his images speak powerfully of many political issues. CAN you find God in a truck? Do Buddhist monks carry machine guns? And could Anwar Ibrahim be like a durian? All this, and more, are ideas swirled about in the current solo exhibition by Anurendra Jegadeva, or Anu. Entitled My God is My Truck: Heroic Portraiture From the Far Side of Paradise, the show may tickle its viewers, before confronting them with deeper questions once the comic facade has worn off. The show at Wei-Ling Gallery in Kuala Lumpur begins as you ascend the stairs to the main exhibition hall on the first floor, as you are greeted with paintings of a (cigarette) Smoking Surly Obama placed next to Donald Duck’s, well, butt. “He’s been a bit of a rotten egg,” smiles Anu, referring to beleaguered US President Barack Obama. “No lah ... he’s doing what he can, people expect too much of him.” Still, the artist is poking fun at Obama, who can sometimes seem all rhetoric and no delivery, all smoke and no fire.
And guess which painting is next? Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in the King of Fruit. So, what is his walk behind the talk? After these irreverent teasers, the “real introduction” to the exhibition is Trimurti, referring to the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, that eternal flux of the Creator, Destroyer and Preserver. But Anu reinvents them as three crucified characters: a Jesus with an Obama badge, Cuban guerilla leader Che Guevara and, get this, an Ultraman holding a Hello Kitty. “For me, this is about the end of the American Empire and communism,” says Anu. “And the rise of Asia (along with all its pop culture). Yes, this is Ultraman as Shiva the Destroyer.” He links this to a more realistic idea of Trinity, or Trimurti, in human form in For the Love of Ghee, three life-sized paintings of Hindu priests from Brickfields, KL, arranged in a structure resembling a temple’s inner sanctum. “The young priest is idealistic, while the middle aged man is the most dangerous as he is at the peak of his career with no fear of anything. And then, there is the jaded old person who suddenly becomes more spiritual and wants to preserve the status quo,” explains Anu. “It’s Creator, Destroyer and Preserver again.” And the three are surrounded by a Temple Congregation of 20 Indians (including MIC stalwart Datuk Seri Samy Vellu) with stylised red pottu (of holy ash) dots on their foreheads. “They could be pottus. Or they could be bullet targets. I’m also making fun of commercialism in the art market, you come here and you think wah ... it’s a sell out show,” he laughs, referring to the traditional red dot sticker that’s placed on exhibited works that have been sold. Good art provokes a response from its viewers, and Anu is only warming up. The headline piece, My God is My Truck, clearly alludes to the struggling Indian working classes, dragging their figurative crosses, those heavy loads of low-paying jobs – symbolised as a truck – with hooks sunk into their flesh, like a giant Thaipusam kavadi chariot. And where can they find salvation? Emanating from the truck “god-head” is another Trinity of Indian heroes past and present: the nationalists Mahatma Gandhi and Chandra Bose, plus the cinematic freedom fighter, Sivaji the Boss aka Tamil superstar Rajnikanth.
“There’s a lack of local heroes now,” says Anu. “And so we need heroes from movies.” On the second floor, Anu looks at his own mixed identity as an English-speaking Sri Lankan Tamil Malaysian. In This is Where We Live, he paints the view from his sister’s weekend cottage in Wales (she married a Welshman), complete with the Anglophile culture that his family grew up with – comic characters like Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan. Plus Enid Blyton’s Famous Five too. “It was from illustrations in those books that I learnt how to draw,” Anu recalls. He has even painted his great-grandfather’s dashing figure on a motorcycle with sidecar. “That was in Sri Lanka in 1927. Even then, he dreamt of being white.” But he is certainly questioning his own post-colonial background. In Alphabet for the Middle-Aged Middle Classes, he has torn out pages from his childhood story books and reinvented them. For instance, in E is for Empire, he juxtaposes a traditional British drawing where Arabs are portrayed as villains with an American combat plane and a torn Iraqi bank note with Saddam Hussein’s face on it. In V is for Vigilant, he draws upon his memories of living in Australia when the 9/11 terrorist event happened in 2001, when people were told to “watch out” for “suspicious characters”... like those with dark skin? Indeed, the Empire can only be sustained when those it rules still support it psychologically. “I have some relatives who were born and bred in England,” Anu recalls. “When some other Sri Lankan relatives knocked on the door one day, the children shouted out ‘Mum, there’s a darkie at the door!’” In J is for Jesus, he asks the question, Who Would Jesus Bomb? This is an obvious reference to the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) often cited by those Americans who claim to be pious, devoted Christians (such as former President George W. Bush) but who also support the terrible wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And in R is for Resuscitate, it is Asians who are rescuing traditional icons such as Superman and Mickey Mouse, which is Anu’s way of saying that it is cash-rich Asia that will save the debt-laden West! On the third flood of the gallery, Anu shines a strong spotlight on religious bigotry and fundamentalism – all tinged with ironic humour, of course. In Bakthi, he shows a scene from the Ramayana where the Monkey God Hanuman (with a machine gun) has rescued Sita and now returns to report to Rama (slinging a grenade launcher) that he has burnt Sri Lanka in the process. In Merry X-mas, the War is Over, he shows how bittersweet “victory” is by depicting Buddhist monks with assault rifles. While literalists may be quick to take offence, they should pause to consider the artist’s deeper message: the lunacy of two sides who fought a war over 30 years to “protect” Hindu or Buddhist “civilisation”. Anu doesn’t stop there, and goes on to paint his own aunts as War Brides of the Tamil Tigers, who were renowned for their female military units. His aunts may not be amused – they have yet to see the paintings! “But they are coming for the opening (on Sept 25),” smiles Anu. “I tried to make them as sexy as possible, with bosoms and all, while the guns are very phallic.” But behind the levity, he has a deadly serious purpose: “These soldiers were young women in their prime, they could not even have relationships once they became fighters. “When the Sri Lankan army entered one hospital or base camp, it seems there were over 100 injured Tamil Tiger female fighters in wheelchairs who could not get away. They swallowed their cyanide capsules (which are always hung around their necks) and you had over 100 wheelchairs with dead women in them. That was too strong, so I did these paintings instead,” he explains. “Basically, war is futile, and we should not glorify it.”
From Sri Lanka, we can draw a cautionary tale about battles for racial identity. In Walking with Poets, the dead Tamil Tiger leader, V. Prabhakaran, is portrayed in a sombre blue resting place along with Tamil poets. “He fought in the name of protecting Tamil culture, language, identity and religion in Sri Lanka,” says Anu. “And the war really escalated after the Jaffna Library was burnt down.” He is referring to the powder keg of May 31, 1981, when, after a political rally at which three Sinhalese policeman were shot, it is alleged that paramilitary personnel went on a rampage and burned down the Jaffna public library which contained over 97,000 books (including priceless Tamil manuscripts). “But how can you kill in the name of something as gentle as culture and language?” asks Anu. “The atrocities committed on both sides were completely at odds with the (Tamil-Hindu and Sinhala-Buddhist) ideals they espoused.” And, of course, such problems with racial and religious fundamentalism have absolutely no reference to peaceful and harmonious Malaysia. Which is why Anu’s final painting in the exhibition is of a severed, bloodied cow’s head entitled Portrait of My Father as a Cow. “It’s a reflection of my parent’s relationship,” he smiles. “I have also painted my mother as the Queen of England.” Of course, my first thought when I see this painting is of those protesters who were against the relocation of a Hindu temple earlier this year, parading and stomping on a severed cow’s head in the streets of Shah Alam. However, Anu says, “What I wanted to do was to confront people with a painting of a cow’s head. That’s it, nothing else. “I come from the tradition of English figurative painters who depicted animal parts such as hooves, tails or tongues. For me, it’s a still life. Whatever others want to see in it is up to them....” The political scientist Farish Noor (who will be officially opening the exhibition on Sept 25) says, “It’s important that art has to continually engage the people that it addresses. Certain wars in Malaysia seem more taboo to comment on, due to the political sensitivities in Malaysia. But I think it’s the duty of the artist to transcend, or at least, to question that. “The cow’s head may cause some controversy but I hope a corporation will buy it and display it publicly.” Anu’s subjects are clearly autobiographical (what with his relatives being subjects!) and also Indian-centric, just like his last exhibition two years back entitled Unconditional Love, when a journalist asked him if he “felt his work was racist”. This question was also put to the art critic, Dr Jolly Koh, who responded by telling Anu (in the exhibition catalogue essay): “From what I see, these paintings are merely depictions of fact – there is no innate racism in your work. The contemporary Indian subjects portrayed do not spout Indian dogmatism and superiority – there are no warriors in your paintings, nor underlying racial agendas. “Just because your works depict Indians doesn’t make you a racist, for God’s sake. Racists are people who think that they are superior merely on grounds of their race, or people who make racial distinctions when they are not relevant.” Or, as another art critic quipped, “When you paint warriors of a certain race, you are regarded as nationalistic. How then can you be regarded as racist if you paint Indian priests?” For his part, Anu claims, “I am not a political painter, I am not judging what is right and wrong. I am just a painter of my times, responding to what’s happening around me.” ‘My God is My Truck: Heroic Portraiture From the Far Side of Paradise’ is on from now till Oct 13 at Wei-Ling Gallery (No.8, Jalan Scott, Brickfields), Kuala Lumpur. For details, call 03-2260 1106/07, e-mail weiling@weiling-gallery.com or go to weiling- gallery.com.
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