Dear friends and colleagues
What is this image “shape shifting cancelled”? Is it some post-conceptual work? An artist working with photographs? Or someone working in a way influenced by John Baldessari perhaps? No, it is an image from the Economist I bought in KL airport on the way back from Malaysia late last Tuesday. As Malaysia has become more hard line in its imposition of Islamic beliefs images of nudity are vigorously covered up. Imagine what sort of job it is to find images of such shocking nudity in the international press and black them out!
BTW I don’t recognise the painting. If anyone does, please let me know!
Censorship – though Singapore is notorious for its stringent rules: no spitting, no chewing gum, no durians on the underground system, etc. I have never had a problem with censorship in seven years of living there. There has famously been significant political censorship: there are books you can buy in Malaysia that are banned in Singapore. However, hardly any art works have been censored or banned, but Singaporeans do talk to me of having internal censorship, that instinctively they don’t break rules – or else do so very discretely.
Periodically we get storms in teacups about the representation of gayness, for example, the book And Tango Makes Three based on the true story of a pair of male penguins who raise a chick together was removed from the children’s section of the National Library as promoting homosexuality and put in the adult section. At least it wasn’t burnt or pulped – and no-one was hurt. Unlike Malaysia (where the opposition leader has just been imprisoned on a charge of sodomy) Singapore is my gay friends tell me actually a gay friendly city.
Culturally, in Malaysia the issue is not so much Islamisation as Arabisation. If you look at the old mosques in Malaysia and Singapore they are often really nice examples of local architecture. The example I attach from near Malacca is a fairly typical one. Now every mosque that is built seems to be a replica of an archetypal Mecca mosque. Such uniformity is boring. It is, I guess, another form of globalism.
Today I am in Bandung, West Java. It is the second art centre of Indonesia and much less Bohemian. Last night I had supper with three artists, a gallerist and two critics. It was a good evening and we had good conversations but I did notice we ordered only two bottles of beer between us and I drank most of them. This is not unusual: alcohol does not fuel the artworld as it does in London.
Currently I sit in the café of Selasar Sunaryo, a museum founded and funded by the artist Sunaryo. I have come to see him and the sculpture garden he is building here. I will tell you all about that next week.
Now here is a dramatic question for you. Why last week was I suddenly surrounded by eight young men in uniform each carrying a gun and made to delete the images on my digital camera?
Have a peaceful, law abiding Tuesday
Tony