KOCHI: FOR Malaysia’s Pangrok Sulap, community engagement is a key artistic practice. The art collective based in Borneo Island, consisting of indigenous Dusun and Murut artists, musicians and social activists, is gaining increased noticeability at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale — for a unique reason.
At the ongoing edition here, a team of Pangrok members has created a woodcut work that engages with the lives and stories of people of not their hilly locality of ‘Sabah’, but peninsular India’s coastal state that is hosting the Biennale.
This, they have done in collaboration with the people of Kerala, 3,000 km west of their Southeast Asian country.This genre of the woodwork has been a trademark art by the 2010-founded group based in landlocked Ranau district, 1,700 km east of Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital. “We start carving on wood-board, roll ink out onto it and print it,” says Rizo Leong, one of the founding member of Pangrok.
The process of printing is exceptional: it’s done with members stomping on the cloth placed atop the board and dancing to the music they play. “Whatever you see in our works are based on our interaction with the local people. The scenes are from what are common or recurring scenes in society,” Rizo said. Late last week, into the third day of the Biennale, Pangrok effectively demonstrated the workshop format of their art making. Typically, it included conversations with locals and culminated in a performative unveiling of the work. This was made the print from a wood slab.
Music also plays a binding force among its members. “We all love music, especially punk rock. Well, Pangrok means punk rock (the way locals pronounce it) and sulap is a hut used as a resting place by Sabahan farmers,” Rizo explained.The collective initially began doing charity by associating itself with orphanages, homes for the disabled and schools in interior districts of their island.
Slowly, it got onto the track of empowering rural communities through art. It was in 2012 the collective was introduced to woodcut techniques. “That turned to a medium for us to spread our message through art using banners and posters,” said Jerome Manjat, another member of the collective. “We want to raise issues such as the destruction of mother nature and social inequalities.”
In a greater search for involvement with communities, the collective works on an array of crafts: T-shirt printing, woodcut, bookbinding and music. “We also do projects and workshops. We want people to be aware of current issues,” Jerome said.