Curatorial Text: Desmond Mah’s Twisted Bodies tell their tales
I have written a text for Desmond Mah’s exhibition “Twisted Bodies Tell Their Tales,” from 16th October to 9th November, 2024. The show is part of the 2nd Indian Ocean Craft Triennial 2024 and will take place at Mossenson Galleries, Western Australia.
Find the complete text below
Desmond Mah – Twisted Bodies Tell Their Tales
16th October to 9th November, 2024
Indian Ocean Craft Triennale
Anger is a marvellous
force that can be used as fuel, or can be used for destruction.
There are some artists who dive into this feeling from a well, turning their
anger into a force for creation.
But it is possible to use this dionysiac force only if we are open to tame, to
give it shape, through the apollonian power of knowledge.
Desmond Mah is one of
these artists. In his articulation of the raw emotion with the discursive tools
of the present, he is able to read his personal experience in the framework of
the necessary cultural shifts that are slowly happening all over the world.
All of this translates into the powerful paintings and sculptures in “Twisted
Bodies Tell Their Tales,” which stand in the gallery space like a silent demand
for justice.
The work all originates from a first body of research during Mah’s 2023 Fremantle Arts Centre residency, which proved itself to be instrumental in establishing his current art technique. The feedback the artist received from three exhibitions in Singapore in early 2024 had him further developing the series of works. These pieces are now exhibited in the framework of the Indian Ocean Craft Triennale.
It is true that you wouldn’t expect such a striking show in what James Captain Cook and his colonial fellows would describe as “Terra Nullius”; what we would call Australia today. The Latin term has been used for centuries to refer to a “territory without a master.” It is part of the different concepts imbued in the filamentous artworks of the Singapore-born Perth-based artist, who uses art to reflect on the colonial legacies of both countries.
A portrait of Captain
James Cook himself, in an interpretation drawing from Nathaniel Dance-Holland’s
famous portrait, is our first doorway in this very concept of “Terra Nullius.”
This definition, referred to Australia represent the denial of the existence of
Indigenous sovereignty. In the artwork’s title – displayed at the bottom of the
painting – Mah re-imagines Cook’s honest thoughts behind his frowning brows:
“I Secure My Place Whilst Disregarding Others.” Behind the celebrated
colonial exploits of those who once ruled the world, there is ultimately that.
Complete disregard for “the other.”
And so, right off the bat, it’s clear that Mah’s approach to colonialism will be unapologetically direct.
Even the title of the show “Twisted Bodies Tell Their Tales” has something piratesque to it. As if, waking through his pieces, the viewer could find himself softly chanting the “Dead men tell no tales,” riff, with some satisfaction. Of a piratesque ethos Mah has the joy for the disruption of the status quo, just like pirates were disrupting the trade routes of power which kept empires together – alongside their subjugated populations.
“The colonial figures depicted in my pieces are actual deceased individuals, yet they symbolise a bygone era and continue to exert influence,” explains Mah, who in his practice reimagines these figures through the traditional technique called Zhizha. This technique involves crafting paper effigies used in religious rites – transforming them into new forms and invites viewers to engage closely with a dark history.
This practice embodies the artist’s respect for his Chinese roots and underscores the role of ritual in maintaining cultural continuity while creating modern sculptural paper paintings. Simulacra and battlefield of history and memory at once, these artworks allow us to look at today’s realities of colonialism with a more subtle understanding. The use of xuan paper—a medium traditionally used in Chinese art – is another way in which Mah is deeply connected to his heritage, both symbolically and materially.
To understand where the artist comes from, we must look at the root of Mah’s inquiry, which can be traced back to his early education in Singapore, where British colonialism was often portrayed as a benevolent force, bringing modernization and order. This sanitized version of history – “sanitized” is a term often associated with everything Singapore – shaped his initial understanding of colonialism, completely obscuring its more violent and exploitative dimensions.
The biographical element is a strong element that motivated Mah to tackle the topic of colonialism. His migration to Boorloo/Perth in the late 1980s marked a significant turning point, as there, he encountered the brutal realities of racism firsthand, which include daily racial abuse, slant-eyed gestures, and epithets hurled at him from passing cars.
After all, it was a whole culture that ultimately both legitimated and resulted in constant street harassment. The presence of Jack van Tongeren, a notorious white supremacist leading the Australian Nationalist Movement, further heightened the tension and fear during the years of Mah’s arrival in Australia, forcing the artist to confront the colonial enduring legacies of racial hatred and violence. While this figure is not straightforwardly represented, its influence is constantly evoked in Mah’s painting.
In those first years, Mah couldn’t help seeing how racism in Australia clashed with the harmless narratives of his youth. This stark cognitive dissonance propelled Mah into a deep, ongoing examination of colonialism’s impact, a theme that has never left him ever since.
Even his depiction of a dead fox by the street, an artwork called “The road-kill I saw leaving Koorabup (Denmark, Western Australia) and later in my mind,” goes beyond the imaginary of dead animals on Australian highways. It becomes a symbol, not dissimilarly from the art of Antonio Ligabue, which depicted the animal life of struggle for survival to speak of humans, or the Aesop’s tales. Cautionary tales.
Mah explains that in the Chinese classic text “The Classic of Mountains and Seas,” the fox is depicted as a malevolent spirit that devours humans. “Encountering a dead European red fox both excites and frightens me as a Southeast Asian-Australian,” he says, as he thinks of the fox as introduced species, a sentinel of British colonisation and an apex predator in a foreign land. “Foxes have ravaged native wildlife and reshaped the Australian landscape irreversibly.” However, looking at the artwork we find ourselves asking who is the predator, who is the invader, and ultimately who is the victim.
Other pieces are more straightforward. Consider for example a strange homage to Queen Elizabeth, called “Regalis Gemmiferus.” Here, Mah transforms the Imperial State Crown, that glittering emblem of British imperial power, into a grotesque relic. It is no longer an object of admiration but rather a twisted symbol of the insatiable greed and exploitation that characterized the British Empire. The QR codes embedded within the piece are more than a mere nod to modernity; they represent an insistent invitation for the viewer to actively engage with the past in a way that is immediate, personal, and unavoidable.
These codes lead to a voice that articulates the crown’s inner thoughts. The artist explains that he wanted to express the crown’s conflicted emotions, torn between its royal symbolism and the ethical implications of retaining a gemstone taken from its place of origin. Through this imaginative device, the artist is meaning to create a reflection around the enduring legacies of imperialism and the moral dilemmas surrounding restitution.
In this sense Mah’s work is not confined to the past; it is deeply rooted in the present, acutely aware of the ongoing struggles for decolonization and justice. His art deals also with contemporary issues, from the resurgence of white supremacy to cancel culture, the ongoing debates around reparations and the legacy of the empire. Mah’s work is not a lament; it is a call to arms, a demand that we confront the lingering effects of colonialism and work towards a more just and equitable future. Ultimately Mah’s works are yes fuelled by a certain need of fighting back, but are definitely not born from hatred. Rather, they are born for a love of social justice.
This is the essence of Mah’s work: the transformation of history from a distant, academic exercise into a living, breathing force, one that demands engagement and reflection. He is not content to simply present the facts; he forces his audience to grapple with them, to confront the uncomfortable truths they reveal. This is not history as we have been taught it, sanitized, and stripped of its horrors; this is history at its rawest. After all, it’s the twisted bodies, and only the twisted bodies, who can tell their tales.
Mah’s use of AI in his work adds yet another layer of complexity. Being the artist’s approach and exploration of colonialism grounded in direct reading of scholarly writings and published biases, he used ChatGPT as a conversational tool to support his speculative approach to painting. For Mah, who is neurodivergent, AI is the perfect tool to navigate the overwhelming deluge of information, assisting him in navigating complex historical ideas.
The artist explains that for him AI acts as a resource for synthesising extensive amounts of information quickly. “By leveraging AI to process and analyse historical texts, scholarly articles, and various viewpoints, I can achieve a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the subjects I explore in my work,” he says.
By merging academic research with his artistic practice he is able to create a dialogue between historical fact and creative interpretation. “This fusion enables me to challenge existing narratives and offer fresh perspectives through my paintings,” he explains. “The speculative elements of my work become a way to engage viewers in a deeper examination of history, encouraging them to consider alternative viewpoints and the impact of these historical figures on contemporary issues.”
Historical accuracy is not the point for the artist. In the exhibition speculative elements meet factual ones, in order to reinterpret and reimagine these figures. The integration of academic insights into his artistic practice is evident in his revisitation of historical figures, both the “heroes” like Stamford Raffles – who has been described in Western history for centuries as the “founder” of Singapore – as well as the “commoners,” exemplified by figures that he calls in the artwork titles “empire builders.” These paintings represent labourers wearing a pith helmet—historically worn by colonial soldiers to shield against the tropical sun, which to many viewers would evoke the menacing imagery of Klu Klux Klan.
As for Stamford Raffles’ legacy, this is for each Singaporean, an unavoidable figure to confront; alongside Lee Kuan Yew. With his works Mah is “counterbalancing” the numerous memorials to Raffles in Singapore and beyond, looking at the fallibility of even those deemed as heroes, not demonising them, but having them descending their pedestal.
A perfect example is the work “Secret Letter to a Friend in Banjarmasin,” where he imagined – with the help of AI – a concealed correspondence between Stamford Raffles, in his role as the British Lieutenant-Governor of Java, and Alexander Hare, the Governor of Banjarmasin. The dialogue touches upon the Banjarmasin affair, a less-known historical event that saw Raffles facilitating the provision of women to Hare’s settlement, procured through “coercive and unjustifiable means,” as a favour to a friend. With this dark painting, inspired by Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s famous “Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre” Mah depicts Raffles as a skeleton, letting the public know about these darker narratives often omitted from Raffles’ biographical accounts.
Someone says that courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision that something is more important than fear. Mah’s work embodies this particular kind of courage, a relentless pursuit of truth and justice that refuses to be silenced, and through art speaks directly to our subconscious.
Ultimately, we can read Mah’s exhibition as an act of defiance, a refusal to allow the past to be rewritten by those who would rather forget it.
In this sense, “Twisted Bodies Tell Their Tales” is a testament to the power of art to provoke, challenge, and inspire. Mah’s work is a call to action, a demand that we confront the uncomfortable truths of our history and work towards a more just and equitable future. It is a challenge to all of us, to look beyond the comfortable narratives that have been constructed, and to see the world as it truly is—flawed, painful, and in desperate need of change.
