Paiman’s Ceremony

The Pokok Pauh Janggi exhibition at Kapallorek Artspace was officiated by my dear friend and important contemporary artist, Azizan Paiman. This is expecially significant as Paiman is featured in the photographs of the Koboi Balik Lagi series of the Koboi Project. He is someone with whom I have had a long relationship, first as a curator (Tenungan Curator), and then as a brother (Saudara Baru), and now as a fellow artist with a shared vision of the mdalities and meanings of art making in Malaysia. As part of the opening event of the exhibition, Paiman presided over the ritual transfer of a vine, nurtured in his garden, to the care of the Kapallorek Artspace.

In this ceremony another brother, the renown contemporary artist and teacher, Hasnul Jamal Saidon, Paiman, and I jointly transferred the plant into a pot, and handed it over to the care of Fadly Sabran, the founder/director of Kapllorek Artspace. This extension of the arboreal symbolism of the Pokok Pauh Janggi exhibition marked the deeply personal bonds of our respective relationships, while also suggesting a nexus and a line of development in contemporary Malaysian art. I was particularly moved by how Paiman’s ceremony got Hasnul and myself acting in unison once again, as we had done so effectively and so effortlessly in the days of the 1st Electronic Show and E-Art ASEAN.