From There to Now

From There to Now is rooted in the complex tensions Malaysian artists faced in 1971, in the wake of pronouncements from the National Cultural Congress. The congress stipulated that art ought to help cultivate a strong national identity through emphasis on indigenous Malay and Islamic cultural ideas. At first glance, this triptych by Ismail Zain seems to adhere to this, expressing Malay design elements. In the central panel, Ismail projects images drawn from Malaysian life, such as decorative doilies and common street-side flowers like the morning glory. On closer scrutiny however, the work reveals subtle modernist tendencies. Ismail’s selection of shapes and colours is highly controlled and he deploys decorative motifs by considering their spatial relationships to other images on the canvas, rather than using the elements in their nationalistic context. This approach reflects Ismail’s contemplation of modernist, painterly principles. He admitted in an interview: “I am excited about working with things which at first don’t relate to each other and I try to create a relationship in pattern and surfaces.” In the painting’s title, From There to Now, the two discrete dimensions of space and time are juxtaposed, as if to upend conventional assumptions of the painting’s symbolic meaning and announce its modernity.