Nirmala Shanmughalingham

Extract from “Masterpieces from the National Art Gallery of Malaysia”

《Vietnam》 1981 Acrylic on canvas 102cm x 201cm

Born: 1941

Education:

1966 - Corcoran School of Art,Washington

1975 - Oxford Polytechnic (Oxford Brooks University), Oxford

1992 - London University, London

Nirmala Shanmughalingham is a significant older woman artist belonging to the second generation of Malaysian artists. She was trained in the United States and England. Her interest has been with issues dealing with the environment and also with the ravages of war. Her perceptions have been largely determined by her own feminine background and nature. She has produced works dealing with the Vietnam war and also with the conflicts in the Middle East, such as the notorious attacks on the Shabbara and Shantilla refugee camps by the Israeli forces during the Eighties. And the emphasis in her works dealing with war torn situations has largely focused on the plight of the sufferings of women and children, who are trapped in these difficult and painful situations of conflict.

Vietnam belongs to a series of important works that she created based on the American war against Vietnam. These works were produced during the late Seventies and early Eighties. She usually uses silk screens which contain images taken from the popular mass media press and the international news magazines. These images are stencilled onto her canvasses via the silk screens. Her paintings are rendered in black and white, for the most part, thereby lending a stark documentary quality to her works. The silk screens allow her to repeat her images sequentially and she uses this repetitive technique, also noticeable in this particular work, to heighten visual and emotional effects. These repeated images exist against emotively rendered gestural brush strokes and structured linear shapes that heighten the sense of explosive chaos and carnage. The images of the suffering women and children and the barbed wire depicted here are carefully chosen and utilised by the artist to heighten emotional effects.

Nirmala Shanmughalingham’s interest in issues and themes that are pan-Asian is notable. She has tended to view her role as a social commentator within universal contexts.