YEE I-LANN: Boogeyman
16 September – 3 October 2010
Black Box @ MAP KL, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Presented by Valentine Willie Fine Art in collaboration with RogueArt

Born in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo 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 mainly photomedia-based practice seeks resonances across history, landscape, memory and cultural identity. Her visual vocabulary is extensive—drawn from historical references, popular culture, topography, archives and everyday objects.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 artist’s second solo exhibition in Malaysia, Yee I-Lann: Boogeyman, to be launched in Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Day, 16th September 2010, brings together a major new body of works – the Orang Besar Series, and other key works from the past three years including the Kinabalu Series (2007) and Kerbau (2009). The Orang Besar Series is a narrative in several parts of works in photomedia and batik, exploring a social and political consciousness through the metaphor of local and regional motifs. As a whole, the exhibition explores notions of the body politic, piracy, resistance and nationhood.

About the Artist

Yee I-Lann (b. 1971, Sabah) received her BA in Visual Arts from the University of South Australia, Adelaide in 1992, majoring in photography and cinematography. She represented Malaysia at the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery (1999). Since her first solo exhibition, Horizon, in Kuala Lumpur in 2003, she has taken part in international exhibitions such as Contemporary Commonwealth at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2006), Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves at ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Germany (2007), New Nature at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand (2007) and the recent Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2009). Also a production designer for feature films, she straddles the South China Sea spending time between her hometown in Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur.

Black Box @ MAP Level G2-01, Block A5, Solaris Dutamas, Jalan Dutamas 1, Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur)

Opening Hours: Mon – Sat: 10am – 6pm

Tel: +6 03 6207 9732