The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 168 Dusun Karaoke Mat: Ahaid zou noh doiti (I’ve been here a long time) 2020 Split bamboo pus weave with kayu obol black natural dye, matt sealant / 220 x 320cm (approx.) / Purchased 2021. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Best known for her work in photography, Yee I-Lann has expanded her practice to incorporate weaving collaborations with indigenous communities in her home state of Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo. Wishing to revisit the fibre mat–weaving practices of her Kadazan grandmother, Yee discovered that the techniques and even the plant material used had died out with that generation. Instead, she connected with Sama Dilaut communities in Semporna, and Dusun and Murut women in Keningau, to make mats collaboratively. Yee has not only incorporated her newly acquired techniques into her own practice — most notably in an immense double- sided mat commissioned for National Gallery Singapore — but also produced a number of collaborative works, and promoted the work of the communities involved. Her weaving projects mark a major departure in her practice, which has coincided with her move from Kuala Lumpur to her birthplace of Kota Kinabalu, where she has reconnected with her Sabahan identity, advocating strongly for Bornean art, culture and community activism on an international level, while working to foster contemporary practice locally. Produced in collaboration with Kadazan-Dusun women from around Keningau in the state’s mountainous interior, APT10’s Dusun Karaoke Mat: Ahaid zou noh doiti (I've been here a long time) 2020 is a text-based weaving comprising lyrics from beloved and iconic Dusun songs in stark black, block lettering woven into a lustrous bamboo ground. Visually, it reflects the starkness of Dusun tikar , or woven mat designs. Tikar are conventionally created for very prosaic uses, including drying food, providing comfortable sleeping space and wrapping the bodies of the deceased. Nevertheless, they also bear great commemorative and sentimental value. Tikar are typically made by women as an expression of accumulated knowledge, and skilled weavers are highly regarded for their artistry — to the extent of commanding higher dowry prices. For Yee, the mats denote spaces of communal significance, preserving customary rhythms and behavioural grammar, while performing an architectural role in daily life, demarcating and democratising space. As a means of connecting customary and contemporary expressions, Yee’s tikar are developed so that their surfaces correspond to pixels on a screen. The artist composes her designs digitally and transfers them to a billboard tarpaulin that acts as a template. The letters are woven into the mat using strands of bamboo blackened with natural dyes in the customary Dusun technique. Dusun Karaoke Mat: Ahaid zou noh doiti (I've been here a long time) belongs to a series of text-based works that Yee has produced in this mode. In those works, recognisable lyrics from popular English-language karaoke standards by the likes of Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and Guns N’ Roses are strung into concrete poetry, running without punctuation in a single paragraph aligned with the left edge of the mat. Dusun Karaoke is the first of these works that Yee has made in Dusun language, compiling fragments from folk songs that are a typical feature of communal socialisation and celebration, and often sung as an act of resistance against assimilation and forced homogenisation. For those familiar with them, the words are intended to trigger memories of the songs, creating an internal soundtrack reflective of sounds found across Sabah, where karaoke is widely popular. When suspended, the text can be seen in reverse on the rear of the mat, its ghostly bamboo tone deliberately evoking the precarious status of Dusun language and custom, faced with disappearance like the techniques and materials once used by Yee’s grandmother. Reuben Keehan Yee I-Lann Born 1971, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia Lives and works in Kota Kinabalu