Untitled (in solidarity)

This is one of the rare works in which Ezzam’s skin approaches me as it is, undisguised as a beguiling flower encased within a shape of glass. Instead, it presents itself at once as organ and envelope, a still-breathing membrane; a whole sole laid bare.

The performative video presented here pays homage to the late Brazilian artist Letícia Parente (1930-1991) in its revisit of one of her most seminal works, Marca registrada (Trademark, 1975). Borrowing from its form, the camera focuses on Ezzam’s hands as he threads a needle, guides it into his foot, and embroiders onto the top layer of his sole. The similarities to Parente’s iconic piece however end here for now. Ezzam performs this act of sewing steadily, puncturing his skin time and again until a word creeps into view: “MINORITY” – spelt out in capital with crude letters of black thread. He snips off the excess with a dressmaker’s scissors and angles his foot in display of the finished word before the picture fades out.

Ezzam-Rahman-Minority
Audiences acquainted with Ezzam’s practice would by now be sensitive to his longstanding interest in the body, which he uses as both medium and metaphor to explore themes of identity, abjection and invisibility as a queer Malay-Muslim in Singapore. In his performance art practice for instance, allusions to this ‘otherness’ can be glimpsed in his unsettling smearing of body paint all over his arms, face and inner walls of his mouth (black paint for when he dons black, white for when he wears white) till the invading pigment obliterates every hint of his original complexion, erasing him from both inside and out. In his installations, the politics of visibility and abjection are likewise evoked through the objects he sculpts from skin peeled from the very soles of his feet. Often enough, these take the form of flowers that seek to captivate from afar, but the spell turns abruptly on viewers as soon as they draw close enough to recognise the furrowed lines of human skin. Too often they recoil at this realisation, troubled by the mismatch between perception and expectation.

Appearance, after all, isn’t everything – and Ezzam’s works offer more than just a visceral response. While the words “Malay” and melayu are most often used interchangeably in reference to ethnicity, melayu also translates in a second and lesser-known way: “to wither” or “to slowly decay”. In incorporating his brown body into his works, Ezzam exploits skin as ephemera, as site of meaning at which cultural identity is both formed and assigned – thus opening up the perceived “worth” of minority communities for deeper contemplation. Such symbolisms may be subtle and unuttered, but are deeply embedded and ever present in his works.

It is from this perspective, I suppose, that this latest performance for video looms with an unusual force. you’re just going to stand there and watch me burn? builds on the same longstanding themes in his practice while being produced during a particularly strange and tumultuous time in our recent history: in the midst of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic with enforced distancing and new realities; as the Black Lives Matter movement peaked in the US and rippled across the world into Singapore as well, stoking the flames of our own systemic and deeply-rooted racial tensions; as gender and sexual minorities continue to face varying degrees of discrimination worldwide. Reflecting on this cultural moment, Ezzam has made an unprecedented leap — where difference and marginality are typically alluded to in his works, here marginality is boldly proclaimed, reclaimed, and brought to the very centre of the piece.

While scepticism generally remains about art’s essentialness or ability to affect any real social or political change, its diverse voices can, at the very least, demonstrate how every culture, subculture and individual is as valid and vulnerable as any other. At the heart of this video is the artist’s meditation on what it has meant to inhabit multiple minority identities. Recognition of difference is presented here as a source of pain or discomfort, with the act of sewing – long regarded as a “feminized practice” – adding yet another interpretive layer to the performance. Like Parente, Ezzam implicates the viewer in his act by compelling us to observe the action from up close. In our interest to discover the word he is forming, we cannot look away, amplifying our discomfort to see the wholeness of the body violated and the unassailability of the skin willingly breached. And in our silence, we become complicit in this act of (self-)harm; we grow into awareness of our responsibility (especially for those of us majority camp-dwellers) in the broader social contract.

Despite these times of distance, the body as a site of common physiological experience remains a powerful tool for inspiring empathy. Ezzam’s work is a message of solidarity to other marginalised voices, seeking to empower them to forge new paths for themselves, on which they will continue to traverse – tall and proud – on the soles of their own two feet.

Teng Yen Hui
August 2020


翻訳 www.DeepL.com/Translator

無題 (連帯の中で)

この作品は、イザムの皮膚がガラスの形に包まれた魅惑的な花のように見せかけずに、ありのままの姿で私に迫ってくる数少ない作品の一つである。それどころか,それ自体が器官であり封筒であり,まだ呼吸している膜であり,足の裏全体が剥き出しにされている。

ここで紹介するパフォーマティブ・ビデオは,ブラジルの故レティシア・パレンテ(1930-1991)へのオマージュとして,彼女の最も重要な作品のひとつである『Marca registrada』(商標,1975)を再訪したものである.その形を借りて、カメラはエッサムが針に糸を通し、それを足に導き、足の裏の最上層に刺繍を施す手に焦点を当てます。しかし、パレンテの象徴的な作品との類似性はここまでである。Ezzamは、ある言葉が視界に忍び寄るまで、何度も何度も皮膚に穴を開けながら、地道に縫うという行為を行っている。”MINORITY” – 大文字で黒糸の粗野な文字で綴られている。彼はドレスメーカーのハサミで余分な部分を切り落とし、写真がフェードアウトする前に完成した言葉を見せるために足の角度をつけている。

Ezzam-Rahman-Minority
イザムの活動を知っている観客は、イザムが長年にわたって身体に関心を寄せてきたことに敏感になっているだろう。例えば、彼のパフォーマンス・アートの実践では、この「他者性」への暗示が、彼の腕や顔、口の内側の壁にボディ・ペイント(黒を着るときは黒、白を着るときは白)を不気味なほどに塗り重ねることで垣間見える。彼のインスタレーションでは、足の裏の皮を剥いで造形したオブジェを通して、可視性と忌避の政治が同様に喚起されます。多くの場合、これらのオブジェは花の形をしており、遠くから見る者を魅了しようとしているが、人間の皮膚のしわの入った線を認識するのに十分なほど近づいた途端に、その呪文は急激に変化してしまう。あまりにも多くの場合、彼らはこの気づきに反発し、知覚と期待のミスマッチに悩まされます。

結局のところ、外見がすべてではない。イザムの作品は、単なる内臓的な反応だけではない。「マレー」と「メラユ」という言葉は、民族性に関連して頻繁に交換して使われますが、メラユはもう一つ、あまり知られていない意味でも翻訳されています。”枯れていく」「ゆっくりと朽ちていく」という意味です。イザムは褐色の身体を作品に取り入れることで、文化的アイデンティティが形成され、割り当てられる意味の場として、皮膚をエフェメラとして利用している。そのような象徴性は、言葉にならない微妙なものかもしれませんが、彼の作品には深く埋め込まれており、常に存在しています。

そのような観点から、この最新作のビデオ・パフォーマンスは異例の力強さを持っていると思う。それは、現在進行中のコビド19のパンデミックが強制的に距離を置き、新たな現実に直面している最中であり、ブラック・リヴズ・マター運動がアメリカでピークを迎え、シンガポールにも波紋を広げ、私たち自身の体系的で根深い人種的緊張の炎を燃やしている最中であり、ジェンダーやセクシュアル・マイノリティが世界的に様々な程度の差別に直面し続けている最中でもある。この文化的な瞬間を反映して、イザムは前例のない飛躍を遂げました。彼の作品の中では、通常、差異と余白が言及されていますが、ここでは、余白が大胆に宣言され、再生され、作品の中心にもたらされています。

一般的にアートの本質や、真の社会的・政治的変化に影響を与える能力には懐疑的な見方があるが、その多様な声は、少なくとも、あらゆる文化、サブカルチャー、個人が他のものと同じように有効で脆弱であることを示すことができる。このビデオの中心にあるのは、複数のマイノリティのアイデンティティを持つことが何を意味しているのかについてのアーティストの瞑想である。違いの認識はここでは痛みや不快感の源として提示され、長い間「女性化された実践」とみなされてきた裁縫という行為は、パフォーマンスにさらに別の解釈の層を加えています。パレンテと同様に、イザムは私たちにその行為を間近で観察するように強制することで、鑑賞者をその行為に巻き込みます。彼が形成している言葉を発見しようとする私たちの興味の中で,私たちは目をそらすことができず,身体の全体性が侵害され,皮膚の安全性が進んで破られるのを見ることへの不快感を増幅させます.そして沈黙の中で、私たちはこの自害行為に加担するようになり、より広い社会契約の中での自分たちの責任(特に私たち大多数のキャンプ居住者にとっては)を自覚するようになる。

このような距離のある時代にもかかわらず、共通の生理的経験の場としての身体は、共感を呼び起こすための強力なツールであり続けている。イザムの作品は、他の疎外された声への連帯のメッセージであり、彼らが自分たちのために新しい道を切り開くための力を与えようとしている。

Teng Yen Hui
2020年8月


Performance at Distance

Ezzam Rahman – you’re just going to stand there and watch me burn?


Biography 略歴

Teng Yen Hui

3 Comments

  1. Yoshiya Makita

    Many thanks for your contribution to our new program “Discursive Arena” in R3: Scape-City. Your paper deciphers subtle nuances of Ezzam’s performance while contextualizing it in broader aesthetic and social backgrounds. Your explanation on the intersectionality between Ezzam’s self, identity, and community seems best fit to the overall theme of R3 Scape-City. 

    I personally love your sentence “[…] Ezzam exploits skin as ephemera, as site of meaning at which cultural identity is both formed and assigned […].” The concept of ephemerality could be used to understand various aspects of contemporary art, and your insight gave me a chance to reconsider the constitutive character of skin and body as ephemera that would generate a performative act in a transient form. I believe your discussion on the intersectionality, ephemerality, (and perhaps performativity) of Ezzam’s work thus discloses a critical moment in which a performative act produces multiple meanings in cultural and political entanglements.

    In any case, let me thank you once again for your great contribution to our new challenge. Your article is definitely a wonderful start for our program, and I hope this will trigger critical conversation on the relationships of art and society among broad audiences. It is my great pleasure to work together with you in this program.

  2. Love Ezzam how he constantly develops his own style to be Ezzam.
    And each work reminds me of Ezzam`s smile..

  3. Thank you, dear Teng Yen Hui, for the professional commentary.
    I have been Singapore 4 times. The first experience was in 1992. Tang Da We kindly invited us Japanese young artists. The third time, 2015, I met Ezzam and we traveled to China together. He was great. And nice to see his new art work, and how he developed well.
    After I read your text, I realized how he is important in Singapore art scene.
    And I came to mind that we had the other type of multi-cultural conflicts in Japan. They are too much complicated. …..sigh….

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