A piece that I wrote on 7 May 2021 about the Talisman series.

In December 2017, after having lived and worked for 17 years in Kuala Lumpur, I returned home to Kota Kinabalu. The move was bittersweet, as the city had come to form a huge part of my life, but it was necessary. The focus and nature of my life and work had changed over the years, and I was yearning for home, to spend time with my family, and especially mother whose health had been deteriorating for some time.  

After setting up my studio on the ground floor of my sister’s house in Penampang, I set to work on a new series of works. The first work I made was a continuation of the talisman piece that I made at the beginning of the phase that led to my first solo show Red & Gold (2017) at Raw Art Space, co-produced with Sharmin Parameswaran. That first talisman contained the words: FUCK, SHIT, PISS, HELL, and LIES. 

This new talisman contains the words: HURT, NEED UNDO, LIVE, and RESIST. 

The form of the talisman is derived from the Chinese bagua or pakua, an eight-sided diagram representing the fundamental principles of reality according to Taoist philosophy. To be completely honest, I’m largely ignorant of Taoism, but I was drawn to the visual aspect of the diagram and adopted it for my own personal use. 

The talisman works as a sort of guiding set of principles or themes that I would think about when I sit down to make art. I would hang it over my work desk and glance over at it every now and then as a kind of reminder of where my head is supposed to be; a sort of magical protection from scatterbrain syndrome.

The words that make up the talisman have to obey two rules: 1. Except for the middle word, they have to be made up of four letters (in English); 2. They have to be verbs. Deciding on the words is a different matter. While the final decision can be totally impromptu, the thought process behind it is something that happens over months and years. They sum up certain life experiences, obsessions, feelings, but with the urge to act upon them. 

I think the second talisman was very personal to me. Unlike the first one, which was more provocative, this one feels more contemplative. For me, HURT and NEED are about acknowledging personal strife and unfinished business. Meanwhile, UNDO is about emotional and spiritual healing, and LIVE is about giving reality a chance. But at the core is RESIST, a word that warns against complacency. 

In a way, the talisman tells the story of my move back to Kota Kinabalu, readjusting to a domestic kind of existence. But over the past few years, it has also acquired more layers of meaning, both personal and universal. During the time period of the second talisman, from 2018 to 2021, there had been six deaths in my family, including my mother who passed away in December 2021. And when the pandemic happened, the talisman acquired an almost totemic quality.

At the moment, I’m working on a third talisman. The words are slowly coming to me.