Studio Diaries 02 and 03

Studio Diaries is drafted on my phone and sent out every two weeks. I missed a week, so this is a double serving. Thanks for being here! More Smoke Signals soon.

Mon, 1 Sep 2025

Woke up to the refinery belching black smoke. Set up a new CCTV camera to capture footage of the flare. First time smoke has been this bad since our townhall with the CEO last year. Anyway, we have them under surveillance again – let‘s dance.

Tues, 2 Sep 2025

Transferred drawings for Monkey, Arowana, Mudskipper and Crocodile to lino. I haven’t seen anyone share this technique, so here goes:

Transferring images to lino: Inkjet tracing paper method

• Lightly wet-sand, then clean and dry the lino.
• Inkjet print the drawing at highest quality on tracing vellum. No need to reverse the image.
• Quickly place printout face down on lino sheet. Tape down. Rub the back with a spoon to transfer the image. You need to work fast before the ink fully dries on the tracing paper.

Wed, 3 Sep 2025

Uncle Tamu came to look at the trees. We need to cut the old coconut at the back, and trim the avocado and nangka. It's a big job, but he has a team with a skylift and chainsaws. We’re transforming our house into a more public space over the next two years, so I’m including house updates in this diary.

Finished printing the whole edition of "Urban Junglefowl" last week. Started printing "Auntie Wasp".

Thurs, 4 Sep 2025

Studied about Beginning Anew, a method of conflict resolution developed by the Buddhist monastics at Plum Village. The steps:

• Express appreciation
• Express regret
• Express hurt
• Ask for the other’s person’s help to lessen the hurt

Brother Bao Tang suggests making tea and preparing a little bouquet [09:00]. This is harder than getting punched in the face.

Friday, 5 Sep 2025

Printed more editions of "Auntie Wasp". Ten more to go.

Worked on Smoke Signals. Updated the News page. Updated a bunch of works at sharonchin.com. Almost forgot about these animated GIFs for a story about hospital cleaners organizing during the pandemic. I was insanely self-critical at the time, but now I love them.

Sat, 6 Sep 2025

Trip to KL. Zedeck and I tagged along with PSM to visit Batu Arang. The residents are fighting the construction of a mega waste incinerator. They recently delivered a trolley piled with 12,000 objection letters to the DoE. Mighty struggles are happening in small towns.

Sun and Mon, 7 and 8 Sep 2025

Watched Fragments of Tuah at KLPAC with Zedeck. Bumped into Eric (curator doing his Phd in craft practices at Cornell), who sat next to me. Drove back to PD afterwards, crawled into bed.

Evening call with Eric. We talk the sun down, and the conversation turns to my plans for showing the linocuts. Eric asks a series of gentle but precise questions, then delivers a line that lock-picks my mind: "there's a disappearance of the collective from the self." After the call ends, I'm buzzing. Zedeck patiently listens through dinner and beyond as I babble on, clutching a pen and notebook. By night's end, I've scribbled out an entirely new show. The linocuts I've been printing this past month... don't make sense anymore. For years, I chased the time, space and financial buffer to be able to produce these thousand prints. Now I'm here, and I have to let them go? Fuckkk. I feel feverish. The new vision coalesces around a certainty, as if obeying a command. "You got it," says Zedeck, and only a fool would argue.

Fragments

• The future belongs to artists who can create/assemble context around their work, not those who broadcast the most.
• Do not cede the ground of context creation.
• Every artwork carries the memory of collaborators, friends, colleagues… people who hate my guts – a whole scene. Context is other people.
• But yeah, sometimes you gotta broadcast AKA post.
• Let the work be sinuous, muscular. Not genteel.

Mon, 15 Sep 2025

This is going to be a week of visitors. Junior and Jerome are first. We hang out, share dinner and eat a big Tiramisu by the sea. Excellent news for KL nightlife: they have resurrected Disko Rabak at a cozy rooftop in the heart of the city.

Tues, 16 Sep 2025

Malaysia Day. Worked on second edition of Buletin Asap, our neighbourhood newspaper. Printed transparencies of shadow puppet animals.

Been cutting animal figures out from pages of Creatures of Near Kingdoms. The new series will be the old linocuts... absent of animals.

Weds, 17 Sep 2025

Two Korean journalists visit to do a story about artists working on environmental issues in Southeast Asia. Today we shoot in the studio, then have lunch and go to the beach. I climb my mangrove tree, and forget the cameras – there are fish crowding the water: tiny, inch-long fry and biscuit-sized silver pomfret. The bigger ones wear trails of green algae, like fabulous hats! The journalists stay back to capture time-lapse of the tide going out. Later at night, they shoot Zedeck and I making shadows with the refinery's orange glow bouncing off our wall.

Thurs, 18 Sep 2025

We head out with the journalists to do wheatpasting on the beach. Zedeck and I paste up fresh images of the two trees, next to weathered ones from a year and months ago. Memories recharged, our contract with the land renewed. I'm glad the journalists came.

Fri, 19 Sep 2025

Liza and Ellen visit. I tell them about the linocut animals leaving their scenes. Where have they gone, and what have they become? Puppets in a shadow play waiting for a new script. Also look, here's the two mangrove trees I salvaged from the beach. Can we find a way to transport them to the gallery?

We lock dates for an exhibition in March next year.

Sat, 20 Sep 2025

Delia Cai recommended Save the Cat! in her excellent guide about how to publish a novel. I crack open the first chapter and end up writing the logline for my sci-fi film. I guess you really can just do things??

Sun, 21 Sep 2025

Downloaded Beth Osnes book about wayang kulit. Designs for the non-traditional character puppets are wonderfully strange.

Fragments

• Artists share class interests with gig workers. #SeniUntukSemua could be more relevant if it focused on collectivizing to improve our working conditions.
• I need to sign up for LINDUNG KENDIRI, PERKESO's Self-Employment Social Security Scheme that insures gig workers (artists!) against work related accidents. Heard about it at... yup, a PSM meeting.
• 'Tinggal' – a word with opposing meanings: to leave and to remain/inhabit.