Chang Yoong Chia
Driving At Night, 2021
Batik sarong (Remazol dye on cotton cloth)
111 x 182 cm
43 3/4 x 71 5/8 in
43 3/4 x 71 5/8 in
I hope to elevate motifs in batik from merely being decorative and ornamental. Instead, I want to explore utilising these motifs as narratives to understand the history of cash crop plantations in this country.
In a series of self-professed accidents, misadventures and ‘failures’, Chang Yoong Chia arrives at this series of drawings and painted hangings (or drapes, sarongs) giving it the elusive if stately title of A Leaf Through History. While appearing to first fall in the flat formality of its title, the paintings and drawings gathered together create, instead, a provocative curve that emanates from the source which stirred its making in the first place- land, the primal act of clearing, and the taming of ghosts.
