Extract from "Masterpieces from the National Art Gallery of Malaysia"

 

《Wayang Kulit Kelantan》　116cm x 56cm　 Oil on board 　1961

Born:        1933

Education: Self-taught

         Nik Zainal Abidin was self-taught artist from the northern state of Kelantan. He had grown up around the world of the wayang ku/it theatre and he thus acquired a prodigious, intimate knowledge of  he characters ‘and stories that make up the repertoire of this famous Kelantanese theatrical form. As an  adult, he spent his whole life depicting these wayang figures in his pairtings, rendered either in the oil or water colour mediums. His attempts to transfer these flat two-dimensional, brightly coloured and intricately carved out puppets onto the flat surfaces of his paintings, since the 1950s, had earned him a unique place in the story of modern Malaysian art. He has been described as an “original” artist for his unique and authentic efforts to deal with pictorial narrative. His sources were linked to the ancient Hindu stories of the Ramayana epic dealing with the mythological adventures of King Rama and his beautiful wife Queen Sita. 

         In this long vertical composition rendered in the oil medium, the depicted scene is a raging battle that is taking place between the army of Hanuman, the monkey king and the army of Ravanna, the evil king of Lanka who had kidnapped Sita. Hanuman’s army of monkeys is depicted in the process of rescuing Sita, who is depicted in the middle, right hand side of the painting. Hanuman is depicted at the top and the evil Ravanna is depicted with a red face toward the bottom, The tight placement of the wayang kulit characters over each other has resulted in the compressed two dimensional character of the pictorial space. The dramatic facial expressions of the mythic figures, from both armies, adds to the fierce, highly expressive atmosphere of the raging battle scene. Nik Zairial Abidin was, perhaps, the first Malay artist to delve deeply and meaningfully into the Malay historical past for his subject matter. And there was, in his case, a genuine authenticity and deep sense of conviction in his search for his cultural “roots’.