MATI DI DALAM BILIK & LEVEL 3A : CIMB Hotel Art Fair ARTOBER
Past exhibition
Overview
On the occasion of CIMB Artober Hotel Art Fair 2022, A+ Works of Art is pleased to present two exhibitions:
MATI DI DALAM BILIK
a solo exhibition by Wiyoga Mihurdanto
The rapid development that is taking place in Malaysia cannot be separated from the involvement of foreign workers. ‘Mati di dalam bilik’ continues Wiyoga’s long-term research into issues of social mobility, taking the hotel room as a site for exploring the lives of Indonesian migrant workers and the politics of immigration, labour, and welfare in Malaysia.
&
LEVEL 3A
a group exhibition by Alvin Lau, Au Sow Yee, Chan Kok Hooi, Ezzam Rahman, Hà Ninh Pham, Handiwirman Saputra, Isola Tong, Izat Arif, Jon Chan, Kentaro Hiroki, Mella Jaarsma, Michael Lee, Tan Zi Hao, Tin & Theyvapaalan S Jayaratnam, Ugo Untoro, Yuli Prayitno, and 0. Curated by Denise Lai.
LEVEL 3A is that fourth floor in hotels across the Sinophone world that speaks of its own silence. It disappears from records, due to a linguistic fear of the abject (in Mandarin, four, 四 sì, is phonetically equivalent to 死 sǐ, meaning death) and what it threatens of the hotel’s deliberate asepticism. And yet, level 3A persists; visitors continue to check into rooms 3A-14, 3A-15, 3A-16, 3A-17, and so forth. It is not the presence of the fourth floor so much as its naming which warrants its silence. Ironically, its deviation from the numerical order only draws attention to itself, amplifying its absence.
Like the metonym, the role of art here could be to expose and dramatise these absences in the global hotel, or conversely to deepen the mystery. Level 3A casts a range of forms and conceptual strategies involved in the consideration of the hotel room as a sensitive space. It emerges as a place that deals with events and effects, in where concerns about memory and structure are touched by death, dust, and “other” forms. And as the artists demonstrate, it is within such non-sites where the force of speculation and regeneration is ripe with potential.
MATI DI DALAM BILIK
a solo exhibition by Wiyoga Mihurdanto
The rapid development that is taking place in Malaysia cannot be separated from the involvement of foreign workers. ‘Mati di dalam bilik’ continues Wiyoga’s long-term research into issues of social mobility, taking the hotel room as a site for exploring the lives of Indonesian migrant workers and the politics of immigration, labour, and welfare in Malaysia.
&
LEVEL 3A
a group exhibition by Alvin Lau, Au Sow Yee, Chan Kok Hooi, Ezzam Rahman, Hà Ninh Pham, Handiwirman Saputra, Isola Tong, Izat Arif, Jon Chan, Kentaro Hiroki, Mella Jaarsma, Michael Lee, Tan Zi Hao, Tin & Theyvapaalan S Jayaratnam, Ugo Untoro, Yuli Prayitno, and 0. Curated by Denise Lai.
LEVEL 3A is that fourth floor in hotels across the Sinophone world that speaks of its own silence. It disappears from records, due to a linguistic fear of the abject (in Mandarin, four, 四 sì, is phonetically equivalent to 死 sǐ, meaning death) and what it threatens of the hotel’s deliberate asepticism. And yet, level 3A persists; visitors continue to check into rooms 3A-14, 3A-15, 3A-16, 3A-17, and so forth. It is not the presence of the fourth floor so much as its naming which warrants its silence. Ironically, its deviation from the numerical order only draws attention to itself, amplifying its absence.
Like the metonym, the role of art here could be to expose and dramatise these absences in the global hotel, or conversely to deepen the mystery. Level 3A casts a range of forms and conceptual strategies involved in the consideration of the hotel room as a sensitive space. It emerges as a place that deals with events and effects, in where concerns about memory and structure are touched by death, dust, and “other” forms. And as the artists demonstrate, it is within such non-sites where the force of speculation and regeneration is ripe with potential.
