Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • ArtAsiaPacific

    RECTIFICATION AND HEALING

    Nov 01, 2019 4 minutes

    Okui Lala

    PENANG / KUALA LUMPUR

    To be multilingual is to have multiple personas—or so it seems in Okui Lala’s My Language Proficiency (2017), a 16-minute video in which the artist simultaneously appears across four sections of the frame, ostensibly conducting a roundtable discussion with herself.

    Each figure uses a different language—either Bahasa Melayu, Mandarin, English, or Hokkien—to reflect on Lala’s family history and language experience at school. Though they are supposed to “use the language that [they] feel the most comfortable with,” Lala’s doppelgangers each end up mixing phrases and languages throughout the conversation, demonstrating the artist’s struggle to find the right

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from ArtAsiaPacific

    ArtAsiaPacific3 min read
    When Lives Become History
    As storytellers, artists are often fascinated with the personal lives and creative output of others. But how can (or should) artists transform these stories into their own work? And as these artworks enter public circulation, what responsibilities do
    ArtAsiaPacific2 min read
    Tsai ming-liang
    On the edge of a quiet river bank a barefooted, red-robed monk presses his heel carefully into the soil. Later, he walks at an inexplicably slow pace across the marble floor of Washington, DC’s iconic Union Station, entirely at odds with the anxious
    ArtAsiaPacific4 min read
    Chitra Ganesh on Rummana Hussain
    Rummana Hussain (1952–1999) is widely considered one of India’s foremost conceptual artists. I had the great fortune of seeing her last solo show before she died, “In Order to Join,” held at Art in General in New York in October 1998. The exhibition

    Related