Izat Arif


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©2025 Izat Arif



Aku Tahu Asal Kau Jadi
2023
Installation shot 


Tetar Tanah, Single-channel video, Full HD2 minutes 10 seconds, 2023


Exhibited in S.E.A Focus, 20 – 28 January 2024, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore
    Over the years, my practice has involved attempts to personify various characters from society. These characters form the building blocks of the attitudes and aesthetics of the worlds occupied by each work, at the same time serving as a check-and-balance for the artistic impulses that I consciously try to suppress. This constant dialogue between avatar and artist–which is also an avatar–for the most part creates a necessary conflict to maintain the distance between my ego and my practice. In this current body of work, however, I look inward to my experience as a father.
    Since the birth of my son, I have employed various techniques to form a circle of protection around him, to ward off evil spirits and supernatural dangers that I have inconveniently been made to believe exist. I have recited various powerful Quranic verses to him around the house. In turn, I have listened to the song Father and Son (1970) by Yusof Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) to calm myself.
    Currently, my duties as a father and my ongoing artistic practice have merged into a single endeavour as I shift my attention to a sculptural rep- resentation of the Tiang Seri. The Tiang Seri (the main pillar of a Malay house) is considered the spine of a Malay house. It is a metaphor for the head of the family and carries the responsibility and symbol of all that is good and bad concerning the home and the family that dwells in it. For these reasons, the pillar is an important component of the Malay house, acting as the central axis from where decisions about its surrounding structures are made. Various rituals are performed in order to determine its placement, and then its erection. Though typically reserved for families of aristocratic and royal standing, one can learn about these rituals and customs from a book entitled Tajul Muluk, which offers a guide to rituals enacted to interpret geographical features that determine the well- being of an area for building certain structures.    As we live in an era marked by environmental concerns, coupled with my own unfortunate inability to inherit any wealth, I am unable to obtain a plot of land to build a Malay house of my own from scratch. However, as luck would have it, I am a visual artist, and there are always opportunities to appropriate many forms of local cultures and customs.

    I begin the series with the Tiang Rumah Baru Untuk Melayu Baru Duit Baru (“New House Pillar for the New Malay with New Money”), a homage to the Western aspirations of the new contemporary Malay with their nascent identity, one that latches onto a past whilst embracing a present that contradicts their own traditions. Drawings, serving as tangkal (amulets), illustrate contemporary interpretations of rituals and the conflicts that the contemporary Malay man must grapple with. And finally, a video documents my attempts to connect with the heavens. In the background an audio track plays the mantera recited for the erection of the Tiang Seri and the lyrics to Father And Son, compressed into one to focus the energy and harness this wisdom.

    This work builds from my perspective as an artist, a contemporary Malay man, and a father, to propose an artistic interpretation that could possibly reconcile a tradition that finds uneasy footing in our present times. Here I meditate on all the various methods one might employ on the road to salvation.
Pokok Seribu Guna, Graphite on paper, 85 x 60, 2023
Conditions Must Be Perfect, Graphite on paper, 85 x 60, 2023
Dreaming Of A Better Gated Community, Graphite on paper, 85 x 60, 2023









Accompanying booklet designed by Izat Arif with essays by Karl Rafiq Nadzrin and Ihsan Hassan
Tunjuk Langit, Balau wood, 91.5 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm, 2023 



Tiang Rumah Baru Untuk Melayu Baru Duit Baru, Balau wood, 240 x 41 x 41 cm, 2023