Malaysia 2019

Title: “Holding Up a Mirror”
Commissioner: Professor Dato’ Dr. Mohamed Najib Dawa, Director General of Balai Seni Negara (National Art Gallery of Malaysia), Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture of Malaysia
Curator: Lim Wei-Ling
Artists: Anurendra Jegadeva, H.H.Lim, Ivan Lam, Zulkifli Yusoff

The Pavilion of Malaysia’s exhibition “Holding Up a Mirror” is a discourse around the concept of identity within the larger context of society at a time of immense political, social and economic change. “Holding Up a Mirror” takes as its starting point the concept of national identity as the space where the personal and the public intersect, where myth and history collide, where national and international perspectives are constructed. Together, the works at the National Pavilion of Malaysia represent an enquiry around self when perceived against a wider framework of the collective. They demonstrate that identity is heterogeneous and in constant flux; it is a weave of many personal narratives into a shared fabric of public consciousness that is at once diverse and unified. Across different media – painting, video, sound and installation – the represented artists offer a commentary on their own search around identity, embracing concepts and ideologies around alterity, cultural hegemony, patriarchy, and globalisation.