For everything left

Hello! It's been awhile since the last send. Some updates:

• In early April, I was in Amsterdam for an artist lab with my fellow Prince Claus CAREC Awardees. I wrote daily letters home - pen, paper, stamps, the whole deal. I'll post them as a Signals diary when they arrive in the mail.
• My installation 'Creatures on the Move (In the Death of Night)' is a commissioned work in Figuring a Scene, curated by Patrick Flores at National Gallery Singapore. The exhibition is excellent and I'm happy to be part of it. On till 1 December 2024.
• Upcoming: 18 May 2024 - I'll be giving a talk at Malaysia Design Archive about my work in textiles, pattern and costume design called 'Dalam Keras ada Lembut, Dalam Lembut ada Keras'. I guess an English translation could be 'The Left Hand of Hardness', with apologies to Le Guin.
• A preview of Shrineshare, a Malaysia-UK collaborative print folio project about what we hold sacred in times of crisis.

👀🔥 One last thing: it would mean alot if you subscribed to Smoke Signals 👀🔥

Now on to the Signal. Puff, puff!

Ketapang Sado

There's this local brand of catappa leaf extract called Ketapang Sado. Sado is one of best franken-words in Bahasa Melayu - a combination of besar (big) and bodoh (stupid). As far as I know, it was invented to appreciate people who go to the gym alot.

On the back shore of my favorite beach is a row of ketapang trees (terminalia catappa) that were sado as hell. The second one down was the sado-est - she was marvelous. People used to leave their unwanted deities or sacred relics at the base, because you can't just toss that stuff in the trash when you move houses. You have to throw them in the river or sea, or let the earth take care of it.

Early in the pandemic, someone lit a thoughtless fire to get rid of their rubbish and burned down Her Majesty Second-in-Row, Most Magnificent, Most Sado of Ketapangs. The trunk left a hollow wide enough for a young child to lie flat in. That hollow soon filled with trash. So people started abandoning their gods at the next tree down.

Third tree down wasn't as sado as the others. But I loved her. I turned 40 at the end of 2020, during Covid lockdown. I celebrated with a sunset Zoom call on the beach, under that tree. A statue of Lakshmi had been left there. Two of her four arms, symbolizing wealth and abundance, were broken off. As the sun went down, the oil platform a few hundred meters out shore lit up. I had lived in Port Dickson almost 10 years by then, but this odd birthday, tinged with apocalyptic romance, marked the start of a new kind of relationship.

Leavings

Over the next two years I saw many gods left at the foot of the third tree down. Every time we visited the beach, we stopped and bowed to her. Zedeck came across a statue of sword-bearing Durga riding a tiger, half buried in the sand. He dug her out and put her under the tree, next to framed pictures of Murugan and Ganesha, saints and gurus, and Lakshmi with the missing arms.

What else did I leave beneath the third tree down on the beach with the oil platform in the distance? A pristine 10 ringgit note I found curled around a mangrove root, that I picked up but didn't want to take home. Silly songs I sang to combat my fear of the dark, as I sat with Zedeck on the night of my 41st birthday, watching hermit crabs climb out of the sea. Dozens of empty alcohol bottles collected during a beach clean-up with Fadhila. A little etching of a moringa plant. Roses from my 42nd birthday. Prayers - for money, for peace, for our complaints about the refinery to be heard.

I think about the trees with whom I've left even more than what I have at the base of the third tree down. Not knowing how else to heal them, I've left 6-year old and 12-year old little Sharon in the care of different trees along the coast. If they were cut down or lost to erosion, surely I would know beforehand - a dream, some signal?

With the first and third trees down on the beach, there was no warning. I was on one of my usual visits, and passed Uncle Ratnam on his bike. I lowered my window to say hi, but he didn't stop. His face was hard.

I went down to the shore and saw why. The first and third trees were chainsawed, straight off at the base. Their stumps oozed resin. No, I don't know who, or why. Or I find the banality of the probable answer - local council workers deciding arbitrarily a tree was getting too big - unbearable. I wandered the beach for an hour or more, witless, a lost child.

A few weeks later, the first tree's stump was already sprouting new shoots. The ground was carpeted with ketapang seedlings, their leaves spread out like butterflies in the morning sun. Deathless and defiant, First-in-Row! But at the third tree - nothing. The stump was starting to dry out. I stood on it, in the empty space. Tears and light rain disappeared into the dead wood at my feet. No luck this time, with the third tree. No more birthdays beneath her soft shadow.

I stood

In the empty space

lack of place

lack of shade

for everything left

Last week I started clearing the under and overgrowth around the third tree's stump. Zedeck wanted to be part of it. The knifelike flame of grief is gone, leaving hot coals. I can work with this. First we'll clear the grass. Tie a bright cloth around the stump. Let's see. No guarantees. No one owns nothing here. But some things belong, regardless.

This has been Signal 003. Thanks for being here. If you subscribed, may good smoke blow your way!

Until the next send,

Sharon

Snapshots from the Studio

I'm working on the book cover art for the Bahasa Melayu translation of Life After: Oral Histories of the May 13 Incident. Like the visibly mended quilt I made for the English version, the new cover will be a textile piece.