The Art of Djalong Liban: Immortalizing the Kenyah 'Mamat' Ritual

These 10 Kenyah paintings are currently exhibited in the Sarawak Museum. The paintings were kept by Professor Jerome Rousseau of McGill University in Canada for about 30 years before they were returned to the Sarawak Museum on 28 Sept 2006. The paintings, depicting scenes of the Kenyah mamat (thanksgiving) ceremony, were done in Kuching in the early 1960s by one Djalong Liban of Long Nawan, Apo Kayan Kalimantan. The paintings were kept by Rousseau for former Sarawak Museum curator, the late Tom Harrison. The mamat ceremony, an important Kenyah ritual, depicted in the paintings, is no longer practised or observed although it is one of the most impressive traditional arat forms in Sarawak. The art of the Orang Ulu is influencial in Sarawak. They can be seen on wall paintings and carvings on longhouse doors, sheaths of ceremonial swords (parang ilang) and other implements, shields and musical instruments, dresses and headgears, baby carriers and chairs, longboats, rice barns, face masks, objects and figures of deities and burial huts.

Heritage Talk

The ‘Heritage talk’ organised by STF, in collaboration with the Sarawak Heritage Society was held at the State Tourism Complex in Kuching on 21 April 09. Minister of Tourism, Datuk Michael Manyin wanted to push for Kuching to be gazetted as a heritage city like Penang and Malacca. To do that, proper documentation had to be done, for example, on its history, people, and virtue among others. Two prominent speakers Laurence Loh from Penang and Lye Pi Chin from Malacca both gave impressive talks based on their knowledge and experiences. Loh was the international assessor in Macau’s successful bid for listing as a World Heritage Site. He also serves as a member of the Penang State Heritage Committee and was part of the Penang team responsible for the Unesco Submission Dossier for George Town’s listing as a World Heritage Site. Lye is an award-winning author, senior reporter and editor for Sin Chew Daily newspaper. She has contributed numerous articles on heritage-related issues and stories of Malacca to magazines and other publications. It was really interesting expecially the Q and A session after the talk. There's also an online poll for this topic "Kuching – A Heritage City?" which you can take part on www.malaysiapollster.com.my. By doing so, you get to win some prizes in the lucky draw.

Sketch on plastic

If you buy those writable cds in bundles you will get these plastics on both ends which protects the cds from scratches. I have a lot of them and decide to recycle by sketching on them. Here are some of the ones I did with permanent markers. I only have 3 color options, black, blue and red. So far, I've given some of these as gifts to friends.

Art and the Marketplace

Here's an article I read from The Malaysian Insider, regarding Art and the Marketplace:

For 20 years or more, if you were a Malaysian artist, not in the popular line-up, yet one of those lucky ones with your artwork in the National Art Gallery’s (NAG) collection, you’ll probably have a quibble with NAG because you can’t find any of your works on display in the premier art institution. Why?

There could be many reasons for this distressing situation. One was that there was simply no deliberate policy, in the past, to display a sample of ever artist, past and present, old and young, of the 3,800 artworks in their collection, for the public to get an overview and judge for themselves what sort of artistic talents we have in the country.

But thanks to the current Director General of NAG, Mohamad Najib Ahmad Dewa, many things have changed. The 54-year-old, who has a PhD in textiles, was the former Dean of the University Science Malaysia’s Centre for Art Studies. He took over the helm of NAG in 2007.

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Amphigorey Too

I mentioned the Amphigorey series of books here. Having borrowed Amphigorey and Amphigorey Again from Gette, I finally bought my own copy, the 2nd book, at Borders. After reading the 1st and 4th, I find the Gorey nonsense so charming and amusing. Here are parts of the 2 of the stories for the new book, Amphigorey Too:-

The beastly baby

The Inanimate Tragedy