(CHEEV The Unconventional Sculptor, The Works of Vong Nyam Chee 1955 - 2017)
DANCING MIS’CHEEV’IOUSLY IN THE FACE OF LIFE AND DEATH (2017)​
Published by Balai Seni Negara (NAG)​
‘Wherever an act of creation is shared with others, then there is -individuation-not just for the author of the work but for the audience too. The singularity of art awakens us to our singularity, and through it to the singularity of the Other’
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J F Martel
‘Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique and Call to Action
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When Vong Nyam Chee @ Cheev announced his presence to the local art scene many years back with a series of sculptures of female nudes made from wood fragments that were uncompromisingly raw in both construct and content, many were unable to make heads or tails behind the motivations of this self-taught artist’s works, and many still couldn’t today. It is just as well for the fiercely independent Cheev who had from the onset maintained that his artistic outputs are the result of inner urges, driven by an inexplicable compulsion to materialize forms, in this case as female nudes in various dispositions which encapsulates metaphorically the life affirming impulses stirring from his psyche. One might be forgiven for assuming that these sculptures are nothing but pure objectification of the female body from the way they are presented. However, theirs are not exhibitionism or eroticism but rather natural physical expressions celebrating unconditional self-love and acceptance. It is an attitude that is diametrically opposed to a repressive self-denial or self-loathing where both inevitably leads to self-annihilation which the ever optimist Cheev will have none of it.
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After almost three decades in the local advertising industry, Cheev’s life took an abrupt turn when he was diagnosed with a mild form of stroke which without a total change of pace in his daily routine could lead to paralysis or worsen to the point of being fatal. For the outgoing and sociable Cheev, this turned out to be a blessing as now he has the time to reflect and decide what are the things that matters most to his heart at this critical juncture of his life. Of course, besides his family there was Art. After a period of reading and contemplation, Cheev made the decision to return to his first love, sculpting.
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Cheev came to the local art scene by the end of his 40s. Though a late starter, unlike other practitioners, he had nothing to prove to anyone but himself. Cheev admits that all his works were created first and foremost for his own personal ‘syiok’. For someone who had spent his entire working life in a commercial industry that exclusively help clients sell dreams, services, products and even properties to the masses, Cheev had finally arrive at where he was just doing things for his own personal pleasure. And what pleasure it was to be able to express oneself unreservedly without a client’s brief or a deadline looming over one’s head.
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Looking at the body of work produced across slightly more than a decade, there are a handful of discernible motifs and themes with psychological dimensions to Cheev’s approaches, reflecting his states of mind during his search for a new direction in the second half of his life.
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It progressed accordingly and developed in tandem as he worked at discovering himself and his place anew in the world again. The naturally talented Cheev whose first sculpture were a pair of mother and child water bearers made at the age of 14, would revisit this subject matter more than four decades later, as a coming of full circle of sorts. His thin and tall water bearers are presented with their lower bodies twisting, like a small tornado slowly building up force but is momentarily kept in check by the women holding jars of water above their heads, a subtle balancing act requiring great care and poise so as not to spill the precious elixir of life held above their crown. Metaphorically, this may represent the tensions between the need to pursue a personal passion versus the need to be practical and prudent, especially at a time when he was without a steady source of income. However, when Cheev finally did heed his new calling, which was to make Art instead of just making a living, his subsequent sculptures dutifully discarded their jars and started moving freely, albeit gingerly. Cheev even traded his ad man attire for a more relaxed mode and grew his hair long marking his new found freedom. The hair and how it is kept or styled in various cultures display not only one’s social status or pedigree, it also represents mental states as well as ideological (Che Guevara, Rock and Roll and the Counter Culture) and spiritual convictions (the Hippie subculture, Hinduism, Sikhism, Rastafarianism, etc). The long hair has come to be associated with the mystical (prophets and gurus), the revolutionary (rebels and freedom fighters) and the irrational (think of all the evil female spirits depicted in various folklores with their long and unkempt hair hiding their hideous looking faces!). Cheev would also progressively let loose the hair of his sculptures, initially kept coiffed in a bun, when they finally broke into a ‘dance’, an uninhibited revolution of spontaneous motions as though possessed by an inner rhythm that could no longer be contained. This surrendering to the mysterious unknown or the irrational is indicated by the way the hair on his sculptures swung their layered, blade-like tresses and even dreadlocks, like wild women.​​
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Portrait of Tan Sei Hon by Vong Nyam Chee @ Cheev
Among Cheev’s repertoire of works, there is a noticeable number of smaller sculptures that resembled various types of Paleolithic ‘Venus’ figurines. Regardless of whether they were made from wood, ivory, baked clay or limestone as statuettes, or incised on walls, the female form was among the earliest handful of prehistoric images to appear when humanity suddenly felt an urge to draw, carve, chisel, sculpt and paint some 30 000 years ago before the Common Era (BCE). The male form incidentally, came into the picture very much later. The numerous Venus of Willendorf (named after the place where the first of such miniature size figurines was discovered in 1908) figurines of various shapes and sizes, all share common exaggerated traits, which are a pair of huge, bulging breasts, protruding belly and buttocks minus an elaborated head, hands and feet. A handful of theories have been put forth for the reasons behind these ‘Venuses’. Some speculated that they represented an image of a pregnant woman, which was seen as a bearer and continuer of the human species in a world utterly hostile to primitive folks. Perhaps the numerous images of the female form which shared such physical traits were symbols of a fertility or mother goddess, indications that early human societies were matriarchal (think of the term Mother Nature, Mother Land or Mother Earth). Some even claimed that these figures were used for self-pleasure by the menfolk due to a fetish for steatopygia, an extreme accumulation of fat at the hips. Whatever the reasons, the female form has been an essential part of our visual heritage as metaphors for some of our myths for countless centuries.
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In psychological terms, the mother’s womb can be viewed symbolically as a timeless state of ignorant bliss where everything is taken care of and one is sheltered from the tumultuous cacophony of the outside world. It is what we conceptualized as Eden or paradise, which in actuality, a comfort zone or safe space that keeps us perpetually infantile. When an individual comes into (born) or is forced out (banish) to the ‘real’ world, it is where a (usually) painful process of growing into adulthood takes place. This however, is traumatic as the chaos of the real world punctures the individual’s delicate sense of equilibrium.
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​Naturally, after encountering a series of setbacks, disappointments, misfortunes or even tragedies, many of us would retreat into our womb-like shell to recuperate. For some, the trauma may be too overwhelming for them to recover their sense of self-worth and dignity which led them to remain in that state of isolation and hopelessness for the rest of their lives. But for those who are willing to learn from their experiences, to accept life as it is and to overcome their initial fear of the unknown, it also leads to the beginning of consciousness, possibilities and realization of one’s distinctiveness. For that to happen, one must set aside one’s ego and preconceptions with its incessant chants of ‘should, could, would’ and be humble enough to ‘listen’, for it is then when things have quiet down that one can ‘hear’ the ‘call’. If one decides to follow one’s calling, one’s true self or purpose which has long been kept submerged, weighed down by conventions, obligations and trepidation, began to ‘emerge’.
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Cheev wrote that “In my creative journey, I stumbled across pieces of discarded wood. I stared hard at obscurity. The mind is beautiful, let it loose. And behold, meaning and beauty appears. I am truly humbled. The opportunity and circumstances that led me to conjure beauty from obscurity with simple materials such as wood, glue and a few household tools were truly overwhelming. Never knowing what to expect and not taking anything for granted, I keep looking for simple pleasures and treasures that may lurk around the corner waiting to be found”. Whether shaking, swaying, jiggling, wiggling, gyrating, twisting or twirling, Cheev’s dancers, like the sculptor when in the process of creating, seemed to be perpetually in the ‘flow’, a state of intense bliss which Cheev was able to tapped into while in the midst of cutting, slicing and finally assembling hundreds of disparate pieces of discarded wood (frames and stretchers collected from a friend’s frame shop) into a dancing female form held together by industrial glue. Cheev has stated that his approach was to immersed and be lost in the process of creating without being too conscious of the final outcome. He claims to ‘listen’ and be receptive to whatever forms that may take shape, stopping only when the ‘wow’ factor reveals itself which renders further acts of elaboration ineffectual.
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Aside of them being more ‘evolved’ when asked why he chose the female form, Cheev wrote that “My art is really about the assimilation of experiences that I have filtered and the conclusions that I have attained. I have found in my spiritual and philosophical encounters that there need to exist polarities to experience existence and life. Being a male, the female counterpart is of course the most intriguing and at times the most puzzling.”
From the statement above, it is obvious, (at least to this writer) that Cheev’s female figures are his attempts through the use of the inner image of the opposite sex that is found in all of us as a way to compensate the disequilibrium of his psyche from years of overdrawing the masculine aspects so as to experience life in a new light again. Called Soul Image, the female image in men is called Anima while the male image in women is called Animus. This soul image plays an important role by offering creative possibilities in the process of individuation, a Jungian term to mean self-development and integration of the various facets of the psyche into a united but also distinctive whole. The word ‘individual’ comes from the Latin ‘individuum’ meaning ‘indivisible’ or ‘undivided’.
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From his artistic outputs, we see the ‘rebirth’ of an individuated being who was initially forced by circumstance to break free from a previous pattern of existence operating under the tyranny of clock hands, regulated endlessly by deadlines and chasing after bottom lines. Now unbridled and unbounded, with wild abandon, Cheev’s spirit soared in the twist and twirls of his sculptures of female forms inspired by a life affirming force that is older than humanity itself. Cheev’s feral nudes invoke the image of human liberation from mental, physical and even ideological bondage to celebrate the human spirit against the taxidermy of the conventional, of nihilism or fundamentalist values that are patently against the life instinct.
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‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution!’
Emma Goldman (1869-1940)
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