Wherein one nods with political sympathy and says I understand you better than you understand yourself, I’m just here to help you help yourself

2013 - Photography (Photography)

62.99 x 62.99 cm

Yee I-Lann

location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
year born: 1971
gender: female
nationality: Malaysian
home town: Sabah, Malaysia

Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors. The artwork belongs to Yee’s series Picturing Power (2013) that deals with the destabilizing impacts of neo-colonialism and globalization on Southeast Asia’s history. Yee approaches the aesthetics and politics of the ethnographic gaze with both irony and humanity, challenging the modes of seeing inherent to the British colonization of Malaysia.


Addressing the turbulent geopolitical history of Southeast Asia’s archipelagos, Yee’s photography-based practice engages with issues of colonialism, neo-colonialism, structures of power, and historical memory. Yee I-Lann’s photography and photomontages explore colonial histories by addressing notions of power, historical memory, and visual culture. She draws upon many visual sources including popular culture, archival photographs, and everyday objects. Surfacing histories and knowledge that counter dominant narratives in Malaysian culture, Yee employs a complex visual vocabulary drawn from historical references, popular culture, archives, and everyday objects. She has recently begun working collaboratively with sea-based and land-based communities and Indigenous mediums in Sabah, Borneo. Yee is also a co-founding associate of The Ricecooker Archives: Southeast Asian Rock ’n’ Roll Treasury with her partner Joe Kidd and has worked as a production designer in the Malaysian film industry.


Colors:



Other related works, blended automatically

7-headed Lalandau Hat
© » KADIST

Yee I-Lann

2020

7-headed Lalandau Hat by Yee I-Lann is an intricately woven sculpture evoking the ceremonial headdress worn by Murut men in Borneo...

Exquisite Eco Living (executive Properties series)
© » KADIST

Vincent Leong

2012

The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...

No World
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2014

No World is an action-filled video work filmed inside an abandoned museum in the Songzhuang area outside Beijing...

Days of Our Lives: Playing for Dying Mother
© » KADIST

Wong Hoy Cheong

2009

Created for the tenth Lyon Bienniale, in Days of Our Lives: Playing for Dying Mother, Wong’s ongoing negotiation of postcolonial globalization takes aim at French society...

Cinema
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2013

In the work Cinema , Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself...

Canton Novelty
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2016

Canton Novelty by Fang Lu captures the adventure of a group of three girls, Ruohan, Lily and Zoe on a summer vacation in Guangzhou, China...

Until It Makes Sense
© » KADIST

Mario Garcia Torres

2004

Mario Garcia Torres imagines cinematic devices to replay stories occasionally forgotten by Conceptual art...

Stanley "Tom" Durrell, Tinsmith
© » KADIST

Sharon Lockhart

2008

Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor, through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...

!Women Art Revolution
© » KADIST

Lynn Hershman Leeson

2010

Hershman Leeson’s documentary, Women Art Revolution (W...

Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark my Creativity
© » KADIST

Mario Garcia Torres

2010

In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...

VertiGhost
© » KADIST

Lynn Hershman Leeson

2017

Using the seminal 1958 film Vertigo as a launchpad, Lynn Hershman Leeson explores the blurred lines between fact and fantasy in VertiGhost , a film commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco...

The Magic Mirror of John Dee
© » KADIST

Joachim Koester

2006

Physical and mental exploration have been founding elements in Joachim Koester’s research for several years...

Black Curl (CMY/Five Magnet: Irvine, California, March 25, 2010, Fujicolor Cyrstal Archive Super Type C, EM No 165-021, 05910)
© » KADIST

Walead Beshty

2010

Black Curl (CMY/Five Magnet: Irvine, California, March 25, 2010, Fujicolor Cyrstal Archive Super Type C, EM No 165-021, 05910) is a visually compelling photogram...

Frontier-Linear
© » KADIST

Doug Aitken

2009

The version of Frontier acquired by the Kadist Collection consists of a single-channel video, adapted from the monumental installation and performance that Aitken presented in Rome, by the Tiber River, in 2009...

Strange Culture
© » KADIST

Lynn Hershman Leeson

2007

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s genre-bending documentary Strange Culture tells the story of how one man’s personal tragedy turns into persecution by a paranoid, conservative, and overzealous government...

Re: Looking
© » KADIST

Wong Hoy Cheong

2004

Re: Looking marks a new phase in Wong’s work which connects his region’s history with other parts of the world...

The Cloud of Unknowing
© » KADIST

Ho Tzu Nyen

2011

The Cloud of Unknowing (2011) is titled after a 14th-century medieval treatise on faith, in which “the cloud of unknowing” that stands between the aspirant and God can only be evoked by the senses, rather than the rational mind...

Nothing New
© » KADIST

Oded Hirsch

2012

Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...