Justice

Zai Kuning

year born: 1964

gender: male

nationality: Singaporean

home town: Singapore

Justice (2014) presents viewers with a curious assemblage: a wooden gallows with slightly curved spindles protruding from the topmost plank, which in turn is covered with rudimentary netting, the threads slackly dangling like a loose spider’s web or an rib cage that’s been cracked open. A bundle of small red rattan balls hang from the front end of the plank, precariously knotted to a single thread hanging from the gallows’ edge. A book hangs from similar red threads at the plank’s rear, its surfaced wrapped multiple times over with the thread to hold it in place, the red thread resembling blood vessels or connective tissue. A strange substance covers the book’s surface: translucent manila-hued beeswax that gives it a cream-colored luster. This assemblage bears anthropological significance, as Zai notes, Justice reimagines the life worlds of the Orang Laut, an indigenous nomadic tribe from Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago that migrates through maritime travel but that has become increasingly displaced and marginalized in recent years. Each component of his installation, by extension, draws inspiration from different objects that Zai found amongst the Orang Laut during his fifteen years of researching the tribe. Zai tellingly does not allow his work to slip entirely towards ethnography, and he does not describe the use value for these objects, presenting Justice instead as a creative rendering of the Orang Laut’s “world” through a composite of their accumulated ephemera. Justice functions as both an imaginary artifact as well as an artistic statement of resistance against forms of cultural imperialism that threatens to erase non-mainstream cultures.

Zai Kuning is one of Singapore’s leading avant-garde practitioners. He refuses to categorize his work, and his output crosses multiple disciplines including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, film and video, experimental sound, and performance. His practice often examines the concept of the “tortured body,” and many of his pieces explore the relationship between somatic experiences and language. He founded the Metabolic Theater Laboratory (MTL) in 1996 to examine the relationship between physical movements and language in Southeast Asian rituals. After disbanding the MTL in 2001, he returned to individually defined practices such as solo performance, writing, sound, and research. His most recent work responds to histories of indigenous people in Singapore and Indonesia including the Orang Laut and Dapunta Hyang Jayenasa.