MALAYSIAN artist Yee I-Lann will showcase her solo exhibition Yee I-Lann: Mansau-Ansau at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) alongside Thai artist Pratchaya Phinthong as part of the museum’s aim to profile Southeast Asian artists.
Yee I-Lann: Mansau-Ansau presents recent and important works by the Sabah contemporary artist, including two new commissions that reflect current aesthetic and material trajectories. The exhibition’s title Mansau-Ansau – a phrase meaning “to walk and walk” in the Dusun and Kadazan languages – symbolises an open-ended journey that encourages discovery for deeper cultural insights.
The exhibition, which runs until March 23, 2025, traverses two decades of Yee’s creation, addressing historical and contemporary narratives and knowledge with a focus on power, identity and community. Through these themes, Yee invites audiences to consider the forces that shape Malaysia and extending beyond Southeast Asia, global cultural and aesthetic landscapes.
Yee considers herself a “reader” rather than a “maker” of photographs, often working with found images and collages to highlight embedded and underlying histories and narratives, thus providing an aesthetic space of observation and critique of visual representation and their alternatives.
In Sulu Stories, the shared seascape between Sabah and the southern Philippines unfolds in photo-media dioramas reflecting the histories of the community as much as the conflict.
Yee’s multi-layered visual vocabulary is further demonstrated in the The Orang Besar Series: Kain Panjang with Parasitic Kepala, Kain Panjang with Petulant Kepala, Kain Panjang with Carnivorous Kepala. Orang besar (big person) refers to those with economic wealth and sociopolitical influence. Applying the traditional batik technique to the familiar clothing of the kain panjang (long cloth), the work explores the complex relationship between the powerful and powerless in society.
Drawing on archives from Amsterdam’s Tropenmuseum, Picturing Power confronts colonial pasts in Malaya through the mechanics of governance, education, and hierarchy. Created a decade later, Measuring Project: Chapters One to Seven offers an anti-colonial perspective using the egalitarian form of the woven mat. The grounded orientation of the mat invites viewers to re-examine value systems and reconnect with ancestral knowledge and their lineages.
Yee’s collaborations with sea and land-based communities bridge cultures, allowing audiences to discover and understand their particular circumstances and, by extension, speak to the human condition at large.
Pangkis, a video work titled after the unique warrior cry of the Murut in Sabah, captures the performance of the Tagaps Dance Theatre while wearing a customised and conjoined Murut Lalandau jungle hat for an uncanny and powerful performance of new possibilities.
Extending the sonic experience to cultural transmission and finding community, Yee’s “hello from the outside” highlights karaoke’s propensity for shared memory and friendship. Presenting the song list of the weavers, the work illustrates the borderlessness of song and invites audiences to join in this lyrical community.
Mansau-Ansau will also be travelling to Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland, in May 2025 for Yee’s first solo exhibition in Europe.
SAM CEO and director Eugene Tan said Yee and Pratchaya are important voices in Southeast Asian contemporary art, each offering nuanced insights into the region’s evolving socio-political, environmental and cultural landscapes.
“Their practices challenge and enrich our understanding of contemporary issues. Yee, for example, addresses historical and contemporary narratives that navigate power. These exhibitions continue our efforts to profile regional artists internationally, with Mansau-Ansau curated with the intent to travel beyond and reach new audiences, further contributing to the global dialogue on contemporary art and its role in society, but from the perspective of Southeast Asia.”
