11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

HAROLD ‘EGN’ ESWAR+RITHIKAMERCHANT Harold ‘Egn’ Eswar (Malaysia) and Rithika Merchant (India) are storytellers who create multilayered artworks that explore narrative and place. Both artists have developed projects for Asia Pacific Triennial Kids that invite children to explore their own stories. Egn encourages children to use their imaginations and reflect on their desires in his drawing project Monster of Wants . Egn lives and works in Kota Kinabalu, in the Sabah state of Malaysia on the island of Borneo, and initially trained to be an architect. Architecture influences his artistic practice, specifically his interest in the relationship between social narratives and place, or what he terms ‘spatial biography documentation’. 1 Initially, he began documenting his own version of the local history of Sabah ‘in the hope that one day the future generation will see this as an artwork and history reference’. 2 As a keen observer of social issues, Egn has since worked with communities to create collaborative maps of neighbourhoods that feature their stories. For the Triennial, Egn has transformed this mapping of experience and place to a mapping of wants. He invites children to reflect on what they desire and draw a monster who embodies their wants. Egn hopes children will feel that ‘this is a safe space where they can express their deepest emotion, [and] tell their feelings or thoughts or aspirations’. 3 He believes that children are ‘observant, responsive and sensitive’, and that by seeing the drawings of other children, they ‘can tell they have similarities and differences in their wants and needs’, and they ‘can practise respecting other people’s expression’. 4 Rithika Merchant also creates fertile ground for children’s imaginations in If the Seeds Chose Where to Grow . The project builds on the idea of terraforming, also known as ‘Earth-shaping’, which is the theoretical process of changing the atmosphere and topology a planet or celestial body to sustain human life; Merchant explores this concept in her artworks presented in the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial. Based in Mumbai, on the west coast of India, Merchant’s bold gouache, watercolour and ink works on paper are inspired by varied sources, including folk art, seventeenth-century botanical drawings, Art Deco and Art Nouveau architecture, and elements of cartography. 5 Merchant begins each drawing by creating a series of folds in the paper to form the ‘architecture’ or the ‘scaffolding’ of each artwork. 6 Her works are rich in iconography as she is ‘drawn to symbols that are universally recognisable and not culturally specific — like the eye, the sun, the moon and botanical imagery’. 7 Merchant combines these elements to form otherworldly environments, in which eyes grow from tendrils, or float, watchful over the landscape. Merchant’s worlds are populated by unfamiliar beings that are neither human nor animal, who are ‘deliberately free of any race, gender or ethnicity’, allowing the audience to place themselves in her work. 8 It is this experience of feeling ‘fully immersed and transported to a new world’ that has inspired the artist for her project for Asia Pacific Triennial Kids. 9 Merchant’s large-scale projection of a mountainous environment with a constellation-filled sky invites children to help shape a new world. By selecting small blocks printed with different motifs of plants, beings and celestial elements that they place onto a glass tabletop, young visitors transform this imagined landscape and their immediate environment. The experience of contributing to the formation of a new world is given further dimension through animation and sound. As the sky slowly transitions from dawn to dusk to a starry sky, children can see the plants grow and watch the figures come to life. For the work, Belgian sound designer Romain Troupin has developed a distinctive ambient soundscape that creates a ‘bridge between the art and the audience’. 10 Merchant hopes that her project for children ‘plants a seed and helps them see that the future could hold many different possibilities and that they themselves could possibly have a hand in shaping it’. 11 In their projects for Asia Pacific Triennial Kids, both Rithika Merchant and Harold ‘Egn’ Eswar create spaces for children to explore and visualise their own ideas. Importantly, the artists remind young visitors that they actively shape their world, encouraging them to reflect on the choices they make and the things they want — and the consequences of both. LAURAMUDGE NOTES 1–4 Harold ‘Egn’ Eswar, artist quotes from an email to the author, 27 May 2024. 5–11 Rithika Merchant, artist quotes from an email to the author, 13 May 2024. Harold ‘Egn’ Eswar / Monster of Wants (installation view, GOMA, 2024); Rithika Merchant / If the Seeds Chose Where to Grow (installation view, GOMA, 2024) / Commissioned for Asia Pacific Triennial Kids with support from the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation KIDS 236 — 237 ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL