Bingkai Berangkai, Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, 2012
Description
Jalaini Abu Hassan, known to everyone in Malaysian Art as Jai, grew up in a village in Taiping, Perak, then trained at three institutions: Mara Institute of Technology, the Slade in London, and Pratt in New York. While in New York he started working with bitumen, the tar-like roofing and road material. He is widely regarded as the first Malaysian artist to take it seriously, and it gives his work its sepia tint. His subjects come from Malay life: kampung memory, proverbs, and current events.
The thing to know about Marking The Moon is what those two pale shapes on the ground are. They carry the ridged tread of the Apollo astronauts' boots, and they spell out MOON. A bent figure in delicate slippers, stoops over them. Jai is setting the 1969 moon landing, one of the last century's great feats of technology, against a posture of ordinary stooped labour. "Marking" works two ways: the bootprint left on the moon, and Jai's own mark-making as a draughtsman.