Kudah

Narrator: This work’s title, Kudah, comes from the Malay word for "horse”. Kim Lim has Malay terms and Malaysian locations for titles of several other pieces across different periods, perhaps a nod to her familial relationship with the region. When you first lay eyes on this piece, you might not immediately think of a horse. This work looks as though she began with a large block of stone, and then sliced off a top corner. The remaining uncut section now extends upward, and it could be the head and neck of a horse. The stone itself is Rose aurora marble, a pale, off-white colour crisscrossed with light grey veins. Look closely. Lim etched a line in the middle of the sculpture, from the bottom to a third of the way up. This might be to demarcate the front and back legs of the horse. Directly above, she etched another line of equal length descending from the top of the sculpture. Here’s Adele Tan, co-curator of the exhibition. Adele Tan: Since the late 1970s, Kim Lim moved from using industrial materials to working with stone, which was her way of responding to the natural world around her. She spoke about becoming [quote]: “aware of the pull within myself - between the ordered, static experience and the dynamic rhythms of organic, structured forms.” She uses lines to guide your eye and create rhythmic structure within the piece. But these grooves are also technical, her way of reducing the weightiness of the stone, like fluting on classical columns, and encourage an intimacy with tactile surface detail. What you might see in these lines and artwork titles is of course subjective. Having lived through many significant political and cultural changes in the 20th century, the artist has had to navigate multiple reference points in art and life. As a result, she hoped that people would [quote] “be able to infer experiences beyond the piece itself. Infer rather than refer to something specific and particular.” Narrator: There is also a smaller model, a maquette, of Kudah that looks like a chess piece. Specifically a knight, who is often astride a horse. Marble is often used to make chess pieces. The use of marble, along with the “horse” imagery, drives home that connection. Adele Tan: Lim was an avid chess player. As early as the late 1950s, she made other sculptures in wood or bronze, named after chess pieces such as King, Queen, Knight and Pawn. These sculptures, whether as maquettes or enlarged versions, have been intentionally scaled to be approachable on the level of everyday activity, never physically dominating but having a rightful presence.