This work is what I call a ‘deep readymade’, by which I mean there is a gesture or configuration by another actor being interpreted or articulated in the work. A deep readymade is thus differentiated from a simple readymade, in that there is a juxtaposition of components done by someone other than the artist. The primary component of this work is a carved wooden Ganesha which was once in my late mother’s possession. When my mother was alive, this Ganesha used to sit on the wall, above her prayer altar and would receive flowers in the course of her daily worship. It is an item she and my father brought back from one of their trips to India and Sri Lanka. While my father was born in Seremban, Malaysia, my mother, myself, and my sister Shyamala were born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. We are Jaffna Tamils and Sri Lanka is in some sense our homeland.

The second component of this deep readymade, is the white stone, a large, well-worn pebble that was picked up on a Sri Lankan beach by the renowned Malaysian artist Reza Piyadasa on his first trip (date uncertain but a book that I believe was presented at the same time is autographed and dated 1995) to Sri Lanka (his own ancestral homeland) and brought back for my mother. The late Reza Piyadasa was a Sinhalese Malaysian and the stone was a deeply meaningful exchange of a piece of Sri Lankan earth (bumi) between two Malaysians, one Sinhalese, the other a Tamil – two people whose communities were at war in their homeland. As Malaysians, however, these two people were at peace with each other, falling together in the shared category of ‘Malaysian Indian’. My mother placed this stone, which was so lovingly brought for her by Piyadasa, at the feet of Lord Ganesha and it has remained there ever since. Beyond this complex image of the interplay of race and nationality in human relations, there is, embodied in this readymade, the personal relationship between Piyadasa and my mother. Piya had lost his own parents relatively early in life and, somehow, he formed a close attachment to my parents. They were his guests when he received the prestigious Prince Claus Award in 1998, and later, in 2007, he called them to his hospital bedside when he was close to the moment of his passing.

In titling this piece ‘The Appearance of a Fact ataupun Batu Kasih Piyadasa’, I pay a tribute to the striking conceptualism of Pia’s early output, while offering a way through its solipsistic reflexivity. In a piece titled ‘A Fact Has No Appearance’, 1977, Pia created an ouroboros-like liaison between form and concept. The piece consisted of a box, part painted, part bare wood, a painted ovoid form, probably made of plaster, and the stenciled text A FACT HAS NO APPEARANCE. It is indeed true that a fact is immaterial and, as such, has no appearance; even while an appearance, which is material, is, indubitably, a fact! In my readymade, we have a material configuration that presents, in its appearance, a simple fact – the fact of love.

The Appearence of a Fact ataupun Batu Kasih Piyadasa, circa 2007 is on display in the Pokok Pauh Janggi exhibition which runs from 5th Aug – 30th Sept 2023 at the Kapallorek Artspace in Bandar Seri Iskandar, Perak