Public Art, Nationalism and National Unification in Malaya/Malaysia

What role has public art played in nationalist and national unification in Malaysia?

It is hard to find anything in the published literature that addresses these questions. My own recent interest in the subject is a result of a chance encounter with the life and work of the noted Guyanese artist, writer and archaeologist, and passionate nationalist, Denis Williams (1923-98). In a recent published lecture, Denis Williams: Art, Blood and Heritage,² he is described as having viewed the artist as 'a dismantler of colonialism', and public art as contributing importantly to the 'optimistic journey from oppression to transcendence'.³ Guyana, like Malaysia, is a country of numerous, originally mainly immigrant, peoples—East Indian, African, Chinese—together with indigenous Amerindians. And, like Malaysians, they continue to work towards a unified national society.

I am embarrassed to say that the terms 'art' and 'artist' are completely absent from my Origins of Malay Nationalism, first published in 1967.⁴ But what of the numerous studies of Malaysian history and society that have appeared in the almost half a century since then? Do they have anything to say about the contribution that public art, in particular, has made or can make to social and political cohesion and a progressive politics? I have not been able to establish this.

Partha Mitter, in his magnificent study of art and nationalism in colonial India⁵ notes that '[the] central problematic of colonialism[is] the response of the colonised to the cultural canon imposed by colonial rule, forcing the colonised to confront his own identity,' adding 'the consequences of westernisation were elusive and problematic, and that the aspect of westernisation with its implications for national identity' were at the heart of his own study.⁶

The situation was no different for colonial Malaya, but so far as I know the colonial period, marked by the growth of a complex plural society, saw no attempt that I am aware of to confront the threat to Malay identity, or to a common Malayan identity, in public art. This situation, it may be argued, changed somewhat in the early post-Merdeka years. At least two national institutions presented artistic facades that sought to express the new Malayan identity—Muzium Negara in Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, and the frontage of the old Dewan Bahasa presented views of the Malayan people's common identity. And in the grounds of Parliament House in Kuala Lumpur, the statue representing the common resolve of the Malayan peoples to confront and defeat its enemies.⁷

Much more recently an attempt has been made in the new federal capital of Putrajaya to embody social identity and purpose in sculptures discussed by Muhizam Mustafa in an instructive article.⁸

But the larger and more extended issue remains, and may be worth exploring by others better equipped than I am to do so.