'Borneo Heart': Exploding the “&”

Yee I-Lann at Art Basel ‘OVR: Portals’
By Beverly Yong

Yee I-Lann, with weaving by Lili Naming, ‘Exploding & (black)’, 2021, split bamboo pus weave with kayu obol black natural dye, matt sealant, 119 x 84cm. Photo by Al Hanafi Juhar.

The exhibition ‘Yee I-Lann & Collaborators: Borneo Heart’ began in Kota Kinabalu at Sabah International Convention Centre and was shown from 2 to 30 May. It will now be reprised as SILVERLENS’ presentation at Art Basel’s ‘OVR: Portals’, the first curator-led edition of the digital exhibition, which features 94 galleries from 29 different countries and territories.

Beverly Yong of RogueArt, curator of ‘Borneo Heart’, speaks with the artist about the premise for the exhibition and the process and possibilities of collaboration.

Involving collaborative woven mats and sculpture and performance-based video as well as photomedia work, ‘Yee I-Lann & Collaborators: Borneo Heart’ is an exhibition which pivots on concepts drawn from the local: the tikar, the tamu, tanah & air. I would like to invite you to unpack these briefly here, and also talk about how they might translate between home and outside audiences.

The tikar is a woven mat. Traditionally in Southeast Asia, all communities sat on mats on the ground, and had a tradition of making mats. The tikar is for me intrinsically feminist, representing a communal, egalitarian power that comes from old knowledges, heritage and culture. In my work, it becomes a way of thinking about sharing space, as well as a platform for collective storytelling and activation.

Tanah & Air describes the geography of home – land and sea, which together make the word tanahair, “homeland”. In Sabah, specific historical animosities between the land peoples and sea peoples persist in contemporary politics, making it difficult for us to speak with a singular voice. My weaver collaborators on the tikar come from DusunMurut communities from inland Keningau, and Bajau Sama DiLaut and Bajau Tempatan communities on Pulau Omadal off Semporna’s coast. I am most interested in the possibilities of the “&”.

The tamu is a traditional weekly farmer's market, where the different geographies and peoples of Sabah meet. This is the foundation of a socio-political landscape, because the tamu is where not only goods but gossip, knowledge and stories are exchanged. To me, it is our natural state, which is to reach out to the other. You go in search of the other, for your personal sustenance. If I need salt, I will go in search of you for salt. And those people selling salt, they want and need me because they need my rice. The very reason the tamu exists is for diversity. It is a celebration of the other, of the “&”.

Yee I-Lann, with weaving by Kak Roziah, Kak Sanah, Kak Kinnuhong, Kak Koddil, ’Tikar Reben’, 2020, Bajau Sama DiLaut Pandanus weave with commercial chemical dye, 22 x 6,279cm. Photo by Andy Chia Chee Shiong.

Yee I-Lann, with weaving by Lili Naming, Siat Yanau, and Shahrizan Bin Juin, ‘Dusun Karaoke Mat: Ahaid zou noh doiti (I’ve been here a long time)’, 2020, split bamboo pus weave with kayu obol black natural dye, matt sealant, 221 x 317.5cm. Photo by Yee I-Lann.

Yee I-Lann, with weaving by Kak Kinnuhong, Kak Sanah, Kak Budi, Kak Roziah, Kak Goltiam, Kak Kuluk, Macik Rerah, Macik Appay, Adik Darwisa, Adik Alisya, Adik Enidah, Adik Dela, Adik Erna, Adik Norsaida, Adik Asima, Adik Aline, Adik Dayang, Adik Tasya, Kak Solbi, Kak Anjung, ‘Tikar Emoji’, 2020, Bajau Sama DiLaut Pandanus weave with commercial chemical dye, 488 x 396cm. Photo by Intan Munirah Hamzah. 

So the tikar as an object links into these broad social concepts, arguably as an expanded medium enveloping its concept, making, presentation and contexts.

What I am trying to do by using weaving and mats is to change the way we look at how we behave architecturally, and also how we use language. I am talking about political wellbeing and sustenance: political structure, social relationships, empowerment, domestic economies, circular economies.

What is the familiarity of language? ‘Tikar Reben’ is a dictionary of heritage patterns of the Bajau peoples that outstretches national borders. This is multigenerational and multilingual in the sense that communities can read and learn from each other’s motifs. ‘Tikar Emoji’ and the “karaoke” mats relate the woven to the digital pixel, and celebrate shared contemporary modes of expression.

But the medium here is bigger than the motifs of a mat, leading out into plant geographies, layered storytelling and economics. It is important that our collaboration has sustained two communities through the pandemic, spurred innovative thinking in the craft industry and even helped create a domestic economy that supports the protection of its marine environment.

“It is important that our collaboration has sustained two communities through the pandemic, spurred innovative thinking in the craft industry and even helped create a domestic economy that supports the protection of its marine environment.”

Collaboration is central to this expanded medium, and I read the collaborations within both the works and the exhibition as operating within the framework and spirit of the tamu. How do you define collaboration in the context of this project and this show?

Yes, it is about finding sustenance from each other. I need the collaborators to bring their knowledge to make my theories come alive, in a way. I claim my artist role and my authorship, because ideas come from me, but my collaborators are also artists, and they are also authors by what they bring to the work.

It is a bit of an experiment for all of us to put this in practice together. There is power and sustenance in our working together. It feeds us economically, and also in terms of innovation and thinking. When you meet somebody who does not come from your community, how does that influence you? When the cinematographers, the dancers, the weavers and myself fed off each other, all of us had something new. 

“I need the collaborators to bring their knowledge to make my theories come alive, in a way. I claim my artist role and my authorship, because ideas come from me, but my collaborators are also artists, and they are also authors by what they bring to the work.”

Yee I-Lann with weaving by Lili Naming, Siat Yanau, Shahrizan Bin Juin, ‘PANGKIS’, 2021, single-channel video, 9 min, loop. Choreography & dancers: Tagaps Dance Theatre. Cinematography by Huntwo Studios. Video still by Huntwo Studio. 

Exhibition view, ‘Yee I-Lann & Collaborators: Borneo Heart’, Sabah International Convention Centre. Photo by Intan Munirah Hamzah.

Your social media profile describes you as a “kangkang-er”, or someone who straddles different communities. Your work as an artist is located in its stories, imagery, politics and now aesthetics but at the same time by participating in the global contemporary art circuit you are speaking to a wide, often cosmopolitan audience. How do you position this body of work for your different audiences?

One of the first tikar we made, in 2019, was commissioned by the National Gallery Singapore for their ‘OUTBOUND’ series. We brought the mat into a building that claims to be a central depository of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary culture, to ask the museum: how is it going to address the peoples that actually live in this region? Can this museum be a mat? 

‘Borneo Heart’ is made first for ourselves, for Sabahans. It is to show home audiences how clever and skilled we are, how much we have to celebrate, and how we can grow our own philosophies of existence. The exhibition is self-funded, with the support of my gallery SILVERLENS. Sabah International Convention Centre offered a contemporary tamu, on the site of a historic port. The Sabah Art Gallery invested their people, networks, and energy. Many, many people are involved. So it is also a model for how to self-organise and be our politics.

To the rest of the world, it is a body of work that talks about decolonising and expanding culture and knowledge systems, linguistics, and speaking across divides. Perhaps we are also showing you how to be sustainable, to find certain sovereignty in your state of being during a time where globalisation is threatened with movement restricted. 

The world is still highly interconnected. I depend on the income from selling artwork for me to be able to continue and this comes from a global world. 

How do you reconcile the collectivity, collaboration and community of the tikar and tamu with the seemingly stratified, persona-centred, capitalist, elitist global art market within which your artworks are marketed?

I do not reconcile. I think the collectors and patrons who are interested in my work are interested in ideas and support me through buying my artwork. It is the art world that affords me to do what I want to do. I do not see it as a contradiction. I take the money from somewhere and I put it somewhere else. Money to me is a tool. Freedom is expensive and I need tools.

Do we think people want to learn more languages? What I mean by that is more ways to find solutions, ways to be wider in your thinking.

Can Art Basel be a tamu? Why not?

Yee I-Lann, from ‘Measuring Project: Chapter 1’, 2021, digital inkjet pigment print (Giclée) on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, 29.7 x 42cm.

What do you think that you and ‘Borneo Heart’ have brought to market?

We exploded the “&”.  We have shown that when you share the tikar and bring people, ideas, energy, passion together, you can make amazing things. When you bring this shared tikar to market, it naturally brings circular economic restorative and regenerative principles into play.  When you allow yourself, and when you can afford time and to play, you invent and innovate.

That is what you pay for when you buy a Yee I-Lann. You buy me my freedom, you buy me tools, and I share the toolbox.

Art Basel’s ‘OVR: Panels’ will be open for public viewing from 17 June to 19 June here.