작품 상세

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this story rubbish? ….. A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives not shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water These refrain (19-20, 22-24) from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) reflects an icicle graveness of a glorious monument now in ruins or the dying throes of fragmentation, yet hanging on precariously to the tendrils of survival. Nature has a way of healing itself, camouflaging or concealing cracked edifices symbolic of a presence, with echoes of a time lost, and battles lost and won. Cries and whispers, song and dance, laughter and tears. Can pain be sutured and merriment mothballed in the quaint existence of life and its struggles? Alas, all that is left is some cryptic parlous forms and shapes that can induce certain fears, hopes or dreams that crest or disappear with the wind. This Pago-Pago work comes after Latiff Mohidin’s studies in Berlin, Germany, from 1960 to 1964, and his travels around Indo-China, e.g. Cambodia, Thailand. A national treasure in paint, print (printmaking), bronze (sculpture) and letters (poet, essayist and translator in three languages – Malay, English and German), Latiff Mohidin hit a career peak in art when his celebrated Pago-Pago Series (1960-1969) headlined a three-month exhibition at the prestigious Pompidou Centre in Paris from February to May 2018. Ilham Gallery presented the same celebrated series from August to December, that same year. National Gallery Singapore presented Latiff Mohidin: Pago Pago from March to September 2020. He was awarded a major Retrospective by the National Art Gallery in December 2012 to June 2013, his second. He studied at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in West Berlin. His international awards included the John D. Rockefeller III Fellowship to study at Pratt Institute (1965) and the French scholarship to study printmaking at the Atelier Lacouriere-Frelaut in Paris (1969). Locally, he won 2nd Prize (Graphics) in the 1968 Salon Malaysia. In literature, his awards included the SEA Write Award (1984 and 1986) and the Malaysian Literary Awards from 1972 to 1976.