This work is an invitation to the audience to enter my world. I want them to experience the chaotic existence of living in the city with its many challenges and offerings. I live in Gombak, with its diverse ethnic make up and different social class groups. On the streets, one can see the endless posters offering loans by licensed money lenders. These bills are pasted everywhere in the style of guerilla marketing to be seen and to entice different sections of society to seek them out for easy credit to either finance a luxurious lifestyle or for starting a business. Most days I just drive past these bills. They all look monochromatic grey to me. Grey is my view of everything. That area between the black and the white. If you go ‘black’, that is a dangerous place, if you choose ‘white’, you are safe. The grey area however, is ‘chancy’, meaning the situation is unstable, undecided or subjective. These posters are part of the subject matter. It is there because I am sometimes tempted to seek them out due to the growing hardships caused by the economic downturn. However, I remind myself forcefully that, if I go ‘black’, I might endanger myself or my family. The many overlapping figures in my work are real people from my area, with their social status revealed through their attires and states of mind from their facial expressions, all walking symbolically on the same path with hard choices. This seem to be the only path available to us whether we like it or not, therefore we have to face it. Money, some need it, some don’t.
Uncertainty In The Gray Area
2016
2016
Acrylic & charcoal on canvas
183 x 275 cm
183 x 275 cm
