What is in a name, its sound, the words used to construct it and the meanings behind those specific sounding words? Why do our names highlight our ethnicity, our tribe or clan, the place of our origin, our social class and what not? Are we even aware that the names given to us were influenced by certain cultural, political and religious outlooks? Could it be that we are the embodiment of the ideas and ideals with which our parents express themselves and hope to live through?

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In the case of self-taught artist Avroco (1974-2011), whose given name is Mohd Nasir, which means ‘praiseworthy helper who gives victory’ in Arabic, the word ‘Avroco’ carries no meaning other than that it rhymes with the words ‘Rococo, Mopiko, Mexico, Coco, mee soto, etc. Mohd Nasir was by most accounts, your regular bloke from your regular family of average means in Terengganu. Armed with a vocational diploma, Mohd Nasir came to KL looking to start a new life. However, after a few years in the capital, he opted out of the rat race, became a drifter and ended up living on the streets for a while. Later, he immersed himself in the local subculture, adopted D.I.Y ethics and became a fixture in the underground music scene. Even in the face of marginalization and poverty, he happily chose the harder path of a ‘professional’ musafir with eyes wide open than to be like the rest of us indefatigable zombies and salaried sleepwalkers still mindlessly chasing after that imaginary good life peddled by the political, pious and mercantile classes while struggling daily to meet the bottom line in an expanding concrete jungle that is increasingly beyond our means to inhabit. Though he was materially impoverished, Mohd Nasir had the wisdom to be content with himself and to live life on his own terms. By effectively dropping all the indoctrination, the pretense and training that he had received in preparation for his life on the ‘hamster wheel’, He came to realized that he was a naked, hairless bipedal who shivered at the sudden clear view of his surroundings now that he is standing on his two feet instead of crawling and scurrying on all four. What he saw, he wrote, he painted and he sang. He became a poet, an ‘outsider’ artist, an underground singer songwriter and more. He became… AVROCO*.

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A month before his untimely death (at the age of 37), Avroco excitedly told his close friend and fellow journeyman Rahmat Haron (b.1977) that he dreamt of his own demise in which he was transported to a heavenly place where he met old friends who had passed on. He later found himself by a shallow river of flowing red wine which he then leisurely scoop up with his bare hands and drank to his heart’s content**.

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Come July this year marks a decade of his passing. Though of a diminutive stature, Avroco continues to loom large in the hearts and minds of those who knew him as a comrade and a friend.  In the few months prior to his death in 2011, Avroco was preparing for a new series of works. Unfortunately, he never had the chance to carry out his plan as his liver unexpectedly gave out. Fortunately for us, Avroco has left behind a sizable number of drawings, paintings and writings (mostly poems) in his family and friends’ possession.

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The significance of his work is comparable, if not more so (due to the complicated times we live in) to two others warmly regarded artists recorded in the local visual arts history, namely Dzulkifli Buyong (1948-2004) and Zulkifli Dahlan (1952-1977). As an artist with no formal art training, Avroco was able to forge a style that is both original and recognizable. There is also consistency in terms of production and choice of subject matter. Regarding the latter, he swings between the autobiographical and imagination, alienation and euphoria. Unlike the many conventional artists flogging the usual trite and trifle (with some even taken by the grandiosity of their own banality), Avroco’s oeuvre whether paintings, drawings or writings reflect the everyday hopes, dreams, pleasures and despair of living on the margins of mainstream society. This is in contrast to conventional artists who make their living by pandering to the palate of the privileged and protected classes. They produce works that echo and elevate the worldviews of their paymasters. ‘Outsider’ artists like Avroco make works out of an inner necessity, as a genuine life affirming response against the inbuilt death drive in both the productivist credo and conformist ethos propagated relentlessly by the establishment to suppress the instinctual drives that makes us human with the insidious aim to turn us into compliant instruments of labor, pawns of politicians and hostages to dogmas or ideologies. Considering the societal circumstances today, Avroco’s work offers interesting insights into the human condition and our quest to discover some sort of meaning to human existence outside of the confines maintained by various nefarious forces. Avroco, through his art and life, showed us that an alternate mode of existence is possible, where one does not have to put oneself at the mercy of paymasters, creditors, theocrats and the politikus.​