About the Exhibition
Welcome to Kenyalang Circus. Translated as “Hornbill Circus” from Sarawak Malay, Kenyalang Circus interrogates the possibility of the authentic in a neoliberal culture of icons, taking a satirical eye to the commercialisation of Borneo and Sarawak as “Malaysia’s exotic unknown.” For Sarawakian textile artist and graphic designer Marcos Kueh, this project is personal: it traces the faultline of heritage between inherited past and internalised exotification.
Having spent the past few years completing his studies at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Marcos is now based in The Netherlands. Kenyalang Circus is his first solo presentation in his home country of Malaysia, but his star has been rapidly rising in Europe: in recent years, he has shown in museums and galleries across The Netherlands, including the Voorlinden Museum in Wassenaar, the Stedelijk Museum and Galerie Ron Mandos in Amsterdam. Part of the tension present in Kenyalang Circus is how the errant artist, now returned, will be received by audiences in his own country.
If home is the subject of this work, what then can we make of the “journey back home” that bookends the work? Kenyalang Circus suggests that the very idea of home is slippery. Authenticity, as defined by an original, pure conception of culture, is as much a myth as the folktales Kueh draws from for his work. If commerce is one of the many facets with which we might find an idea of home, perhaps it is a different kind of truth, one that requires the whimsical glasses of a personality like Kueh’s.
Artist Talk: 11 February 2023, 11 am at Rumah Attap Library & Collective, 84C The Zhongshan Building
Exhibition Essay
Third World High
by Lim Sheau Yun, 19 January 2023
Witness the eight woven postcards on view by Sarawakian artist Marcos Kueh. Presenting the authentic exotic, Kenyalang Circus serves us tradition remade in a culture of neoliberal icons.
Working in the spirit of re-appropriation, Marcos applies the maximalist logic of capitalism and self-exotification to simultaneously advertise and satirise. Woven Postcard #04: Burung Melodie Rezeki features the Kenyalang (“hornbill” in Sarawak Malay), that icon of icons which has become a metonymy for the state: hornbills are a popular tourist attraction and the symbol that adorns both the Sarawak coat of arms and the logo for Visit Sarawak. A central figure in blood red depicts Sengalang Burong, the deity of war and omens. Hornbills serve as intermediaries between Sengalang Burong and the human world: here, Marcos depicts Sengalang Burong with the head and feathers of a hornbill and four arms covered in ceremonial tattoos, as if in dance. The complex system of augury represented by Sengalang Burong is brought in thematic contrast with capitalist excess. Advertisements, billboards, and signs rendered in baby blue and bubble-gum pink recede as background, while “Burung Melodie Rezeki” (roughly translated to “Bird of Melodic Livelihood”) is rendered in neon-diner-1960s-Americana text. A ring of text frames the entire composition, reading “Kenyalang Circus” in both English/Malay and Chinese. It is a beautiful cornucopia revelling in self-aware excess, demonstrating how culture has been remade for the nation-state and the capitalist global order.
About the Artist
Marcos Kueh (b. 1995, Sarawak) is a designer who has always had a desire to better understand his place and identity as a Malaysian. He graduated with his Bachelor’s in Graphic and Textile Design from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague in 2022. His practice is about safeguarding contemporary legends onto textiles as tools for storytelling, just as the ancestors of Borneo did with their dreams and stories, before the arrival of written alphabets from the West. Currently his artistic research is focused on evoking the presence of colonial narratives in our present-day lives and conjuring new myths to what it means to be an independent country.
In 2022, he was awarded the Ron Mandos Young Blood prize for emerging artists, and his work was acquired by Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His work has been included in exhibitions all around the world, including in Three Contemporary Prosperities at Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam (2022); When Things Are Beings at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022); This Far and Further at Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands (2022); Common Threads at The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur (2017); and Unknown Asia,Osaka, Japan (2017). He currently lives and works in The Hague.
Instagram: @marcoslah