YEE I-LANN: FLUID WORLD
Born in Sabah in 1971, Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann has gained recognition both locally and internationally for her distinctive work as a multi-disciplinary artist, and the stories her art has to tell about Malaysia, Southeast Asia and the cross-cultural nature of the world we all inhabit. Her practice seeks resonances across history, landscape, memory and cultural identity. Her visual vocabulary is extensive—drawn from historical references, popular culture, urban landscapes, archives and everyday objects. Working primarily with photographic media, she handles this vocabulary with deft virtuosity, creating work that is at once poignant, poetic, humorous and engaged.
I-Lann has spoken of her work as a means of probing and interpreting her myriad fields of interest, which range from Malaysia’s communal memory to the cultural nexus of the Sulu Sea to the impact of political structures and the unfolding of history on collective and individual experience.
The publication, Yee I-Lann: Fluid World charts the development of this artist’s practice over the past fifteen years of her career, documenting major works and series of works across this period, while exploring the context of the medium and the subject matter the artist engages with. It weaves together the compelling narratives she has constructed into a larger pictorial story, offering insight into her processes, thinking and research through artist statements and notes. However, the title of the publication also describes the context of these narratives, a ‘fluid world’ of changing borders, shifting cultural identities, histories forgotten and being written. The book thus also seeks to enrich our knowledge and understanding of the Southeast Asian social, cultural and political framework I-Lann’s practice operates within, through short essays by regional thinkers and commentators.
Contributing writers include the historian Anthony Milner, Indonesian anthropologist Dave Lumenta, playwright and essayist Huzir Sulaiman, and Melbourne-based photography curator Isobel Crombie. The publication is edited by Beverly Yong and Adeline Ooi of RogueArt.
Yee I-Lann: Fluid World is a collaborative project by Valentine Willie Fine Art and RogueArt. The book was launched on 30 November 2010 at Valentine Willie Fine Art.
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