http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/4/15/lifearts/17407215&sec=lifearts
Sunday April 15, 2007
The hills are alive with art
Story and photos by ANDREW SIA.
An artist forsakes city life to open a gallery deep in the highlands of Sarawak. Could this be the beginning of an artistic renaissance among the longhouses?
HE has gone against the tide. While his family and most younger Kelabit people have left the Bario highlands of Sarawak to work in the cities, artist Stephen Baya turned his back on urban life and chose to go home to open up an art gallery in his longhouse.
PHOTO: Stephen Baya’s tonguein- cheek installation, Hydrypokes fun at a failed multi-million hydroelectric project in Sarawak’s highlands. The wood comes from the project’s flooded site.
Bario is, of course, renowned as a the “land of perpetual spring” (altitude 1,000m); it’s also known for its fragrant mountain rice, pristine forest treks, mysterious megaliths, salt springs, staunch Christianity and, above all, heartfelt hospitality.
Baya discovered his artistic talent when he “was sleepy during boring lessons in school” at Bario, and eventually found himself working on window and mannequin displays at Printemps department store in Kuala Lumpur in the mid 1980s. During his 16 years as the resident artist of the Kuching Hilton (till 2003), he was involved in hotel decor, poster designs, event backdrops and even dinner table layouts, garnering four Merit Awards along the way.
So why did he give all that up to return home? Especially as even his parents are in Kuching; his sister is a lawyer in Kuala Lumpur and his brother is an architect in Kuching.
It was the search for tranquillity, traditional community and natural artistic inspiration, it seems.
PHOTO: Old and new co-exist peacefully: Baya holds a traditional sapa talunpounded-bark vest made by his mother, Maria Peter, and a piece of bamboo and rattan installation art.
“There’s no need to stay in the city. Just going there maybe once a month is good enough,” says the 43-year-old.
His home cum gallery is a wooden longhouse at Ulung Palang village, a peaceful hill setting 20 minutes walk from Bario town centre. To pay the bills, he works part-time as a jungle tourist guide, does some computer graphic design and is thinking of converting one room in the longhouse into a guest room so he can offer “artistic home stays”.
His works display his virtuosity in various styles and the influence his surroundings have on him. Over a bright yellow painting, he has assembled fern stems from the jungle into a scaffolding of sorts. Under Construction is his testament to recycling and environmentalism. In his other installation works, he utilises dried jungle fruits, a gourd (traditionally used to keep fish), rattan twine and waste wood.
The Tree of Life motif, comprising vegetation in overlapping curlicues representing the natural life force, is an important symbol in the lives of the Orang Ulu, the “upriver peoples” of Sarawak that include the Kelabits. The motif is usually pervasive in their homes, appearing on everything from musical instruments to clothes. In Baya’s longhouse, one whole wall is adorned with a striking, contemporary version done in bright blue acrylic on cloth.
“The Tree of Life starts from one point and goes on like a dream,” says Baya.
The motif is also found in several of his other works. In Proud, it discreetly blends into the dresses of two snooty, fashionable ladies. In Kingfisher, it sings in luminous arcs of blue sky along with the little bird. In the dynamic Viking, it emerges almost as a phantasm from a dark, psychedelic kaleidoscope.
“That was inspired by some similar patterns that I saw on a mock Viking ship in Denmark,” the artist says.
An untitled painting has a pair of surreal, bird-like fish flirting – or perhaps flitting – with temptation at a fishing hook’s sinker and showing clear echoes of Salvador Dali.
Another painting, Big Head, symbolises how the small guy struggles against the majority – though Baya won’t admit that this work is self-referential and that he might well be a bit of an artistic misfit within his community!
PHOTO: The Orang Ulu Tree of Life motif appears in many of Baya’s works: in brilliant sweeps of sky in Kingfisher (above) or as the pattern on a couple of fashionable women in Proud.
Baya was born in Pa Main village, a four-hour trek away near the border with Kalimantan. During the Confrontation with Indonesia in 1963, his family was evacuated to central Bario.
“The Indonesian soldiers came to our village. Later, the British and Gurkhas fought them back. I remember how the helicopter came and we evacuated everything, pigs, chickens, house planks ... only the buffalo was left there. In the hurry, I was almost dropped from the helicopter.”
Old co-exists with new here. The current longhouse (made from solid local Agathis wood, none of that modern concrete here, thank you) has long been in construction – and is still unfinished – to replace the one that burnt down nine years ago.
The area’s recent past makes an appearance in Hydry, Baya’s tongue-in-cheek take on “hydro”. The work refers to an RM12mil hydroelectric project built in Bario by the Government. When it failed spectacularly on its first day of operation in 2002, it entered highland legend – and forced the locals to continue using kerosene lamps and generators powered by diesel (which costs some RM4 a litre by the time it arrives in Bario; in the Klang Valley, it costs RM1.52 a litre).
As pointed out by the then Energy, Communication and Multimedia Minister Datuk Amar Leo Moggie, “Even a layman could tell that this project was not feasible. It (was) a waste of public funds.”
And what does Baya do? He takes the dead tree roots from the dam site and turns them into an installation artwork.
So, will his venture succeed? In recent years, he has held a solo exhibition in Copenhagen and a group exhibition at the Sarawak Museum in Kuching. In the meantime, he is working on promoting his artworks through e-Bario, the village’s only Internet radio link with the outside world – it’s a rather tenuous link, however, as power shortages are frequent.
Multi-talented, he also plays the guitar, drums and, of course, the sape, the traditional stringed instrument of the Orang Ulu. Sitting in his gallery, he coaxes delicate, ethereal tones from the sape that seem to fit right in with all the Trees of Life evident in the space. Perhaps he will also coax an artistic renaissance out of the highlands of Bario.
Stephen Baya can be contacted – when he has access to power and the Internet! – at ohbario@yahoo.com or espanabario@gmail.com
