Syaheedah (Sha-he-dah) Iskandar
Angela Pinto
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Preface
“Building a ‘non-institution’ institution” with Shooshie Sulaiman is a process-centred Fellowship by Singapore Art Museum (SAM) that follows Shooshie’s intention to house a second iteration of an earlier work, Emotional Library (2007) [1], in a shophouse based in Malacca, Malaysia. Shooshie’s artistic practice has never shied away from embracing the personal, intuitive and emotive—all of which Emotional Library (2007) exemplifies as the entry point to this Fellowship.
Through a series of curatorial labs and programmes held at both SAM and sites in Malaysia, the Fellowship’s underlying ethos is guided by incubating alternative curatorial models outside the museum while building critical museology around Shooshie’s practice.
Documenting Shooshie’s Fellowship processes is The Unstable Institution, a series of curatorial fragments—comprising compiled notations, images, anecdotes and observations. The series draws from curators’ experiences of working closely with Shooshie during her Fellowship, to consider how curators document, archive and make connections between fragmented ideas and lived experiences. Each post explores different aspects of Shooshie's mode of working—from her relationships with her carpenters to the choice of materials—in order to interrogate ways of building alternative curatorial frameworks centred around process-driven modes of thinking and art-making.
This curatorial essay is the first post of The Unstable Institution; Shooshie’s Fellowship will be followed by a publication by SAM to be launched in the later part of 2025.
The Unstable Institution: Together-gather
We've heard this before: Contemporary art reflects our times or something along those lines, a common saying we are all familiar with. What is more repetitive—quite rightly so—is the commentary of these extraordinary, uncertain times as we try to reflect and pursue a post-pandemic-COVID-19 world. But the question remains: what is this 'new' world that we seek?
While we've had to massively switch gears during the global outbreak and have tried to return to a semblance of the pre-pandemic 'normal', most of us can agree that the world is no longer the same. That episodic handbrake in the system has given us a moment to reflect on how we have been moving. In this ongoing quest to understand our need for speed against the backdrop of the post-pandemic global situation(s), what does it mean to de-accelerate? What can slowness look like?
Tingkah laku asal
Since the late 2000s, Shooshie Sulaiman has been thinking about origins and the knowledge we have lost or forgotten, which she attributes to the relentless pace of urban development that has us forgoing wisdom from our past. Losing her parents at a young age and being of mixed ethnicity—Malay and Chinese—Shooshie's quest to locate origins is a personal one: a need to understand her birthplace and, why it was precisely this space of all spaces in the world (and universe) that she was born into.
It may seem like a futile quest to address big existentialist questions and one's purpose, but her journey so far is anything but. In the past decade, Shooshie's work has taken her outside her birthplace and into Japan, which has played an essential role in her pursuit. Beginning with a residency in Onomichi, Japan, her long-term engagement with the site saw her occupation with abandoned houses, materials, things and the communities to whom these spaces belong. One project is Siddra House (2013 - Ongoing), named after her daughter, whose name comes from an Arabic word likened to a tree or a star [2]. Once an abandoned grocer, the house was refurbished with design elements borrowed from Malay and Japanese vernacular architecture.
Siddra House was the first collaboration Shooshie undertook with her longtime collaborator, Tukang Minhad Ahmad, aka Pakcik Minhad, who, like many of his peers are masters in reading the stories of the wood, whether new, abandoned, salvaged or damaged, regardless of their imaginable conditions. Although there are similarities between the design of these Japanese and Malay vernacular architecture, Siddra House was a way to bridge these knowledge systems and spotlight the value of the knowledge we have lost at a time when we may need it the most. Abandoned houses are not an isolated situation in Japan; they are a growing problem with the ageing population and declining birth rate in many places around the world. Shooshie intended to gather the wisdom of what has been left behind today when knowledge in working with natural materials is dying as fast as the holders of these knowledge systems.
A House to Hold the Knowledge of the Universe
The recurring presence of a “House” in Shooshie’s works has always served as more than just a structure, or empty vessel waiting to be filled. More than anything, houses are a testament to her practice of storytelling, where its presence itself—in the walls, floors and accoutrements—hold anecdotes, lessons and truths that form a wider constellation of narratives. For Shooshie, these carefully constructed spaces are a medium to collapse time and space, bridging the gaps between the past—held in memories and knowledge systems—with the present through interaction with and within its space. Sometimes, literally carving out connections between the two.
Siddra House may seem like a straightforward collaborative project that Shooshie has undertaken, but its construction involves work with carpenters, artists, curators, thinkers, artisans, landlords and many other communities, too many to list in a single sentence, tying this engagement between Japan and Malaysia. As though this is not already complicated enough, Shooshie also constantly credits many of these projects, Siddra House included, to the work of unseen collaborators.
How does one truly work with the natural world? To Shooshie, it's not as simple as gathering people with the right knowledge, it is also allowing the natural world (and the more expansive cosmos to which they belong) to guide her in realising these projects on their permissible terms. It is sitting with the discomfort that a project may take years to materialise. Even today, Siddra House, although seemingly completed, is still a work-in-progress in Shooshie’s mind.
Shooshie is a strong believer in hukum petanda, the nature of signs revealing themselves at the right place and at the right time. It is giving time to the unseen cosmologies, the environment and inhabitants to show signs, in small or large means. No matter how enigmatic these signs are, Shooshie considers them as blessings for her to pursue her projects—it is also what guides her in her current project with Surau Merlimau.
Surau Merlimau: An Accidental Constellation
Nestled in the middle of a primary school compound along Jalan Melaka lies Surau Merlimau (Surau SK Sempang). Originally constructed in 1931 as a teachers’ quarters, the rumah kampung went largely unused until it was converted into a surau in 1995, where students of the school received religious instruction within its salmon-pink interior.
It started with a casual trip across the road with Pakcik Minhad, invited by Ustaz Mohd Elias Zaidy to fix the patio of the house. Shooshie, who was only there to help hold onto the other end of a measuring tape, found herself at the beginning of what would become an almost five-year project when they realised the entire building needed to be refurbished. After a conversation with the staff of the school, Shooshie willingly volunteered herself for the task.
More than simply a renovation project, Surau Merlimau brings together key aspects of Shooshie’s practice: a love for wood, a desire to connect with and a sense of responsibility to the land and the stories that came before her. Evident in the scale and intentions of her projects, collaborations sit at the core of everything that she does. Within the Surau alone, her collaborators extend from MAIX (Malaysia Artist Intention Experiment, an artistic collective), a team of crafts people and carpenters, videographers and photographers, to the principal of the school and all its students—a microcosm of Shooshie’s network, extending beyond the confines of conventional artmaking, each person becoming a node in a constellation that surround Surau Merlimau.
To be a Shooshie Collaborator is more than just a one-off transactional exchange, but a relationship that shifts and grows slowly over time. Entering a project, one can expect to arrive on site and be eased into the process, not be put to work straightaway. There may be a sit-down chat over kopi, an excursion offsite to explore surroundings or a quick anecdote about how someone has discovered a new use for an underappreciated material or matter (one of her current fascinations: termite mazes). It is these moments that reveal one of Shooshie’s primary modes of working and strength, that which encompasses an intimacy of engagement that takes time, dialogue and a synergy that propels the relationship. This ethos drives the communal spirit, ultimately influencing how her works are developed.
As an artist, Shooshie does not look at herself as a monolith of truth. Instead, her work intentionally makes way for collaborators to imbue their own experience, knowledge and craftsmanship. Her knowledge of wood, for example, is nurtured by her collaborators, Pakcik Minhad and Pakcik Man (Tukang Azman Umar), who besides being key collaborators in Surau Merlimau, have seen Shooshie through numerous projects over the years—both personal and relating to her artistic practice. Meeting with Pakcik Minhad and Pakcik Man, it is undeniable the depth of knowledge that they carry when it comes to their crafts; the knowledge they embody to be able to manipulate, work with and create with wood, and sometimes the unseen elements around it, to bring out its best qualities. These deeply inspire Shooshie and her practice.
In an age of click-to-purchase easily assembled furniture, the notion of “re-vamping a space” in the everyday no longer requires one to break out the chisels and handsaws; instead it conjures the image of an Allen key and illustrations of bold figures instructing us where and how parts two and three should fit together.
It is almost blasphemous to think that one would be able to find anything made of particle board and vinyl within the Surau. Point to any wall, tile or window and Shooshie will reveal a story of who had laid it, where the wood is from, or how it found its way here. Driven by Shooshie’s beliefs around interconnectedness, her respect is not only privy to the people around her but is extended to the natural world, materials, heritage, cultures and histories that spaces may hold. From the choice of meranti flooring (salvaged and refurbished from abandoned spaces), tikar mengkuang hand-carried from Bali and hand-carved room dividers, careful attention is paid towards the natural environment and interaction with its materials.
Ilmu alam
But how is this contemporary art? Shooshie's proposal for the Fellowship was never a straightforward process, requiring us to take several strolls—physically, emotionally and mentally—together without any outcome in mind. Ironically, embodying the name and true potential of a Fellowship: needing us to be curious together, while being in a long-drawn conversation about her unwavering belief that the curatorial is life itself. Sulaiman bought a home (2013), Siddra House (2013 – Ongoing), Surau Merlimau (2019 – 2024) are not only perspectives of Shooshie’s artistic medium but learning ‘modules’ for thinking about the value of existing knowledge inherent in maritime Southeast Asia, inviting us to revisit and carve potential solutions for the future. As living archives, and in the time of the impending climate collapse, its contemporaneity is obvious.
For Shooshie, working with wood symbolises a connection to the forests and the proliferation of a system of knowledge slowly dwindling as the forest and the domestic sphere grow further from each other. While kayu jati and meranti sit at the forefront of public consciousness as luxury hardwoods in furniture, few can recognise the jati growing along the sidewalks. Fewer so can name the trees native to this region, describe how they look like or say what they have been used for. When did you last walk up to a tree to admire its bark? What does it mean to touch a tree and not know its name? Have you considered the life a tree had lived before it became your coffee table? Do you know what wood your desk is made of? Being unable to know where our things come from may seem like an innocent problem now when viewed from an individual lens, but collectively as a species, what would the future look like if generations after us can no longer differentiate between material and matter? What more if access to local forests is no longer possible?
Like the time required to regenerate a tree, Shooshie’s works resist the normalised, fast-paced nature of our labour in today's world, driven by overconsumption and overproduction. Encouraging deceleration and slowing down, Shooshie’s method of storytelling through her practice harkens back to oral traditions of passing knowledge down from one generation to the next. She sees herself as a small part, one of the million characters in this universe—past and present—honouring and passing on these stories, as evident through her role in Surau Merlimau and Siddra House.
For Shooshie, time, space and sometimes—as she has shown in the documentary below—negotiation with non-human actors, coupled with an intuition to recognise being at the right place at the right time. In surrendering time to the non-human, these projects no longer function within the confines of our known reality. It is in this gathering of visible communities and invisible constellations that these projects are able to live, ahead of our time, past and present.
Watch this video documentary by 2 tahun durian production in collaboration with MAIX collective, showcasing the process of refurbishment, its history and stories, and the Pameran Warisan Surau organised after its renovation.
SAM Fellowship II: Building a ‘non-institution’ institution with Shooshie Sulaiman credits:
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[1] The participatory work Emotional Library was first presented in documenta 12 (Kassel, Germany) in 2007. Audiences were invited into a curtained area, where they conversed with Shooshie Sulaiman about two small diaries comprising notes, drawings, collages and personal anecdotes. A similar series followed this work, titled Emotional Baggage—Drawings as Performance (2008). Shooshie—dragging her suitcase with 16 diaries inside—engaged in dialogue with audiences at The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo in 2008.
[2] Taken from an interview between Shooshie Sulaiman with Kuraya Mika, “Shooshie Sulaiman Interview Fake Migration, and More,” in NEW LANDSKAP: Shooshie Sulaiman, exhibition catalogue published by Onomichi City Museum of Art, 2023, 44 - 50. According to Shooshie, Siddra in Arabic means “a tree” or “like a star”. In Islamic theology, “Sidratul Muntaha” means the holy tree in the Seventh Heaven of the Supreme. Later, after naming her daughter, she learned that “Sid(d)ra” appears in two places in the Quran in verses 14 and 16 in Chapter 53, a star chapter, which also describes the star Sirius. Her daughter’s birthday includes the numbers 14 and 16, which Shooshie believes is no coincidence.
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