Review: things we’ve kept, treasured and forgotten (a spectre of objects)

by: Ajunie Virk

A few months before visiting Azzah Sultan’s show at Blue Farm, I was in Indonesia visiting my great aunt for the first time in 12 years. Thick layers of humidity caused sweat to accumulate between the tiled floors, my hands, and feet, as I bent over to examine the knick-knacks enclosed in a towering glass case beyond the living room hallway.

One object stood out to me in particular-- a rusted surma dani (a traditional brass applicator for kajal)-- which hid behind a myriad of portraits and awards. My aunt, who noticed my lingering gaze, dragged the applicator by its ornate metal lattice into the kitchen to be cleaned. Appalled, I watched as she tossed it in the sink, where it was met with a brash spray of the faucet and scrubbed harshly with a lemon slice. I sat a foot away to avoid the spray, with an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. Even though this was clearly routine for her, I couldn’t bear to watch so much force applied onto something I deemed so fragile and ancient, ignorantly imagining it shattering within minutes.

Walking into “things we've kept, treasured and forgotten (a spectre of objects)” caused this feeling to reappear for the first time in months. After talking with Azzah, I assumed it was due to our cultural similarities -- her being Malaysian, and myself of an Indonesian background. However, as I moved through the space I instead attributed the feeling’s source to the nature of the mediums involved (pottery, glass, lace). There was no lemon peel or intense spray in sight, however I found myself almost tip-toeing around the show, to avoid touching, let alone breathing, on the works around me.

Midway through the show, Azzah took extra work out of the kiln and rallied us around the central table to explain her technique. She had been experimenting with applying Batik methods on ceramics to create chip-away glaze that revealed pre-waxed patterns applied hours beforehand. The others around me immediately grabbed gloves and began scrubbing away at individual works, and I soon followed suit, but rather hesitantly. As I glanced at the others’ finished pots, I was met with high contrast and clear designs, unlike the crackled lines in my own hands, stemming from an inability to press down any harder than a light caress.

The experience was a highlight of the show for me. As I learned to apply more force onto the ceramics, I revealed their “pasts”. Soon enough, I was focused less on the outcome and more on the space and people around me. We sat around the table sharing conversations and stories, it all now morphing together in my head into an amalgamation of loud belly laughs, sweat, coughs, slurps (of tea), and crunches (of food). I believe that the show sparked an interesting dialogue concerning the balance between this natural, brash intensity of human existence and the layer of fragility we place upon it the immediate moment it is placed within the context of the past.

Azzah’s works do a great job at investigating this phenomenon. A wall of family photos were framed within stained glass and covered with delicate lace fabric, asserting a fragmented anddelicate filter onto the events taking place in the images. I think about the people in the photos—if they also scrubbed too hard or laughed too loudly like us—and how they are now recontextualized within this delicate framework.

The show is housed in a space with its supporting structures (arches and doorframes) painted in a harsh, chroma key green; the only color that can technically “take us back” to past memories through manipulation in post-production. The video playing on the box TV magnified this idea, actually chroma keying objects to reveal archived images, physically reflecting off of tens of stained glass fish, which acted as an additional filter.

A similar glass cabinet to my aunt’s rested beside the TV , housing what seemed to be works in progress—an incompletely soldered stained fish, unframed photos printed on crumpled fabric, a used palette of green paint. The temporality of the works selected made the glass encasing feel purposefully mismatched, forcing viewers to reevaluate this distance we impose on the past after witnessing the dissonance that comes with actively memorializing the present.

To describe tenacity in the context of a person is to reveal someone gritty, or able to withstand force over long periods of time. “things we've kept, treasured and forgotten (a spectre of objects)” makes me reevaluate why I don’t cast this same association onto heirlooms. In the universe contained within the space at Blue Farm, my great aunt wouldn’t have simply polished the surma dani and returned it to its place. Instead, she would have gone the extra mile to refill it with kajal in preparation to leave a new mark. It’s not about preserving the past gently, but approaching it with the same complexity we afford the present. Azzah’s work moves in that space--simultaneously departing from and creating around objects suffused with care-- treating the past not as sacred, but as deeply real.