{"id":27529,"date":"2007-01-29T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-29T12:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27529"},"modified":"2024-07-04T13:50:52","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T05:50:52","slug":"the-60-second-plug-ahmad-fuads-dislocated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2007\/01\/the-60-second-plug-ahmad-fuads-dislocated\/","title":{"rendered":"The 60 Second Plug: Ahmad Fuad’s “Dislocated”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Tell us a bit about yourself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born 38 years ago in Baling,\nKedah. I graduated with a Fine Arts degree from Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM)\nin 1991, and I’ve been exhibiting since then. I now live and work in Melaka and\nKuala Lumpur. I am also involved in Matahati, an artist collective that my\nclassmates and I, seven of us, formed in 1989. Now there are only five members\nwho are still actively working and exhibiting, as a group or individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What inspired you to pick up the paintbrush?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess the essence of becoming an\nartist is freedom. Though there’s no such thing as total freedom, I can’t\nimagine myself working from nine to five, everyday, for years. I hate rush\nhour, and I don’t like the idea of having to apply for holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the press release for your new show, Dislocated<\/em>, you ‘endured a self-imposed\u2019 exile, being part of two\ndifferent residency programmes in Vermont and South Korea. What made you decide\nto do it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Refreshment: artistically,\nculturally, physically, mentally, psychologically …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was it like, being away from everything you were familiar with? And\nwhat was it like, coming home after?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food was always a problem for me,\nsince I’m Muslim and I don’t cook. After being away for awhile, I started to\nthink of teh tarik, roti canai, nasi lemak, satay, and sambal belacan. So a\nhomecoming was always like a load of fresh water to a lost adventurer in the\nSahara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dislocated<\/em><\/strong> is said to be a result of your encounters in both countries, and\nembodies two distinctive moods. Tell us about the experiences that shaped this\nexhibition.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vermont struck me spiritually, with\nits serene, melancholic, and powerful winter landscape; while Korea gave me the\nmental and physical sense of an artificial and superficial way of life — but\nboth were very important for my development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can you tell us about the works featured in this exhibition?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pieces range from pocket-sized,\nmixed media works and drawings, to 11′ x 11′ oil paintings. There is a mixed media\ninstallation, a video installation, and two video documentations of my previous\nperformances in Vermont and Seoul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have any rituals that must be followed when creating an art work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always start with\n‘Bismillaahirrahmaaanirrahiiimm’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You were held for 14 hours when you arrived at Newark Airport in New\nYork. What exactly happened to you that fateful day?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a Post 9\/11 Syndrome and Islamophobia\nstill prevalent, I was a ‘usual suspect’ since my name is Ahmad Fuad BIN Osman,\nI’m Asian and Malaysian. I guess the name ‘Osman’ is similar to Osama (don’t\nyou think so?), so they just ‘wanna know me better’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any strange incident that sticks out for you from your S. Korean\nexperience?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would you consider the power of Soju\nas an incident?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s your take on the local contemporary arts scene? Any quibbles or\ncriticism?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need good contemporary curators and art critics — only then will our contemporary art scene move forward, in tandem with the Asian and international art scenes. There are a few really good artists around, but they’re kind of stuck under a shadow, a ‘ghost of the past’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who or what are some of your inspirations?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nabi Muhammad, Syeikh Kadir Al\nJilani, Jalaludin Rumi, Syeikh Siti Jenar, Sufism, Buddhism, Mahatma Gandhi,\nTolstoy, Tarkovsky, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, German Neo-Expressionism, Neo\nRauch, Bill Viola, Maurizio Cattelan, Kiarostami, Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu,\nCarlos Reygadas, Yang Shaobin, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Haruki Murakami, Anton\nChekhov, etc …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s irony to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking about Sufism while selling\npaintings at RM75,000 a piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s next for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To keep crawling up this ‘thorny\nhill’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell us a really corny joke about artists.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tired of showing and commenting on\nthe burdens and responsibilities of the artist, an Italian artist one day\napplied for a Medical Certificate from a hospital, framed it and put it up\ninstead as an art piece. He didn’t attend the show because he was on leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be witness to Ahmad Fuad Osman’s lonely sojourns outside Malaysia, which take shape in Dislocated<\/em>, an exhibition of works made during and after his residencies in Vermont, USA & Goyang, South Korea. Thu 25 Jan – Sun 25 Feb 2007, 12. Free Admission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 29.01.2007 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tell us a bit about yourself. I was born 38 years ago in Baling, Kedah. I graduated with a Fine Arts degree from Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) in 1991, and I’ve been exhibiting since then. I now live and work in Melaka and Kuala Lumpur. I am also involved in Matahati, an artist collective that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3558,3539],"tags":[3254,228,3889,3888,259],"language":[7523],"writer":[7614],"class_list":["post-27529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interview","category-visual-arts","tag-ahmad-fuad-osman","tag-interview","tag-matahati","tag-universiti-teknologi-mara-uitm","tag-visual-art","language-english","writer-juliet-jacobs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27529"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39077,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27529\/revisions\/39077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27529"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27529"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}