IN A BLISSFUL STATE OF ATOMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: THE LIFE AND ART OF THANGARAJOO M.A KANNIAH (1957-2023)
Published by SENIKINI​
‘You are not a drop in the ocean, You are the entire ocean in a drop’
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Rumi (1207-1273)
Local artist Thangajaroo M.A Kanniah better known among friends as Raj or Rajoo, and among his students as Mr.Raj, has been a constant presence in the Malaysian art scene since the 1970s. He remains the only Malaysian artist of Indian ethnicity to win the National Art Gallery’s Young Contemporaries Award competition (1984). He was also the first Malaysian Indian artist honoured with a solo exhibition by the National Art Gallery (NAG) called ‘I of the Universe’ at its former premise at Jalan Hishamuddin in the early 1980s. Another noteworthy achievement by the artist was the winning of the Hans Christian Andersen Illustration Award (also in 1984). This competition was sponsored by the Danish Embassy and organized by the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP). Raj has had recent exhibitions at the New Straits Times gallery and the Shah Alam Gallery (both in 2016) He is also involved in the world of art as a private school teacher as well as a lecturer for government sponsored projects.
A native of the capital city, Raj was born into a working-class family on the year of the nation’s independence and spent his growing years in the Bukit Bintang area. His family’s former home address was no.165-7, Jalan Bukit Bintang (now StarHill). He is always proud to point out that his late grandfather (from his maternal side) Marimandoor was one of the early private contractors who built the roads in the Bukit Bintang area long before it became one of the prosperous districts of the ‘Golden Triangle’ in Kuala Lumpur. His late father M.A Kanniah was an employee of BB Park who at one time was tasked to look after the big snakes used by the famous ‘Flower of Malaya’, Rose Chan (1925-1987) in many of her titillating live shows back in the 1960s. His late mother Packiam was a full-time house wife. According to Raj, the two most important lessons he learnt from his parents were (1) ‘Never Deviate from Honesty’ and (2) ‘Work Hard’. Raj completed his secondary education at the Davidson Road School at Jalan Bellamy. His early interest in art was greatly enhanced by the exposure to the thriving capital city-its billboards, TV serials, cartoons and movies available to all. According to the artist, even at a comparatively young age (because of the environment or despite it), he knew he could achieve something significant as an art practitioner. His art journey thus began when he saw an ad in The Malay Mail newspaper in 1974 offering art classes. Lessons in basic drawing and painting were conducted by artists Wairah Marzuki (who later became the NAG’s longest serving Director General), Zafaruddin Zainuddin@Apai, and Ponirin Amin. It was Apai who in the same year, introduced Raj to Anak Alam, an art collective based in an old bungalow located below the Kompleks Budaya Negara (now known as ASWARA). What attracted Raj to the collective was that it was independently run and non-hierarchical in nature. Comprised of thinkers and creative individuals enthusiastic about the arts, there were basically 30 regular members and possibly an equal number who transited in an out. In its heyday, there were actors, dramatists, musicians, poets and painters there. Many of its members would later become well known figures in their respective disciplines with many involved in related capacities in the world of art and drama. According to Raj, the core group of active visual artists in the collective were Mustapha Haji Ibrahim, Mariam Abdullah, Ali Rahamat@ Ali Mabuha, Yusof Osman@ Yusof Volkswagen, Zulkifli Mohd Dahlan (1952-1978), Wairah Marzuki, Abdul Latif Mohidin, (Dato) Sharifah Fatimah Zubir, Khalil Ibrahim, (Prof) Siti Zainon, Abdul Ghafar Ibrahim and Ismail Hashim (1940-2013) to name just a few. It was perhaps rather fortuitous that Raj found himself in the company of such like-minded individuals. These members were in actuality, part of another important early art group, the Angkatan Pelukis SeMalaysia (APS). Unlike the APS however, the artists in Anak Alam viewed art as more than skill acquisition and figurative mastery. They desired the exploration of more non-traditional forms of self-expressions, and to address issues affecting the environment and humanity. They eagerly embrace alternative approaches, incorporating elements from other disciplines to deliver their observations and address their concerns. The incorporation of experimental sound and theatre, poetry, masks, movement, street performance, printmaking and even puppetry were part of Anak Alam’s vast repertoire - their forte lying in the field of abstraction and contemporary approach to figurative art. As an accepted member of this group and in the close confines of Anak Alam’s quarters with its old oil lamps and ghostly tales, new ideas were born. Raj adopted the sphere as his primary art form and explored, using mostly pen and ink, myriad combinations and compositions of patterns and shapes. Raj was yet to rationalize or articulate the reasons behind his exclusive use of these primal patterns and forms, or their underlying meaning. That would come later when he had his NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE (NDE).
‘For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one’.
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Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
In that perilous and yet edifying year of 1984, many things happened to Raj. The Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka had invited a well-known Australian illustrator to provide talks on illustration. Raj and a DBP staff member were tasked with chaperoning the illustrator for the duration of his stay in Malaysia. On one fateful day, they decided to take him to the waterfall at Templer’s Park. Though everyone in the group avoided a dangerous place at the base of the fall which had previously claimed many lives, Raj alone decided to venture further. He climbed 20 feet to a higher spot on the waterfall’s side which offered a more scenic view. A horrifying build-up of water, somehow swept the unsuspecting artist off his perch into the thundering fall below. As he was falling, Raj recall that he saw his whole life flashed before his eyes like a movies reel in a matter of seconds. This phenomenon, called a ‘Life Review’, which is a common occurrence in NDE, reveals to the experiencers everything they have ever done until the moment when tragedy struck. Sure of death, Raj realized sadly that he hadn’t said goodbye to his mother. Suddenly he felt as if a cord had been broken, disconnecting his body and spirit. According to Raj, he was free of his body and floated in the sky, becoming a part of anything he saw. He looked at the clouds, becoming one with it, even feeling the wind whipping at him. He stared at the trees below and strangely became a part of them also. There was no noise, not a single sound in this utterly silent realm which he roamed until he finally came to, reluctantly re-entering his body. Raj realized that he was not yet out of harm’s way. He was stuck on sharp rocks midway in the fall and he could see that water was building up from above while below him are many sharp jagged rocks, which meant certain death. Then suddenly, something made Raj look up. He saw tree roots hanging above and without thinking, grabbed at them and quickly swung himself away from danger.
The experience affected him profoundly, leaving him never the same again. Raj believed he had actually died in that few seconds and somehow caught a glimpse of the workings and fundamental nature of the universe. It radically altered his understanding of the world, confirming his ideas of the connectivity and unity of all life forms. The fluidity with which life becomes death and vice versa was expressed in his art works. Raj sees the connection between his art, science and philosophy becoming clearer and particularly realized that his sphere motif was a visual representation of the atom- the basic building block of the world. The fluidity and ephemeral nature of its existence, its tangible and yet the intangible waves it could produce, were part of a duality, like the opposing sides of a coin. Raj envisioned that the common perception of separateness or dichotomy in many things (such as opposing forces and opposing ideas) was but a myth. There was always reciprocation, complementarity and connectedness at the end. Everything is apart and yet together just as life and death was to him, so many years ago.
Convinced and grateful for his NDE, he treated it as a revelation, dedicating his artistic life through his drawings and mixed media works to the unity and inter connectivity of all things in the universe (hence the ‘I of the Universe’, first at the NAG and ‘The Pulse of Creation’ his second solo at the NSTP gallery). His grand motif-the everchanging sphere always representing atoms with the weaving lines signifying disconnectedness and the light rays showing wave flows, permeate all his works. They remained consistent with his philosophy and the ultimate truths which he has discovered through readings and his life experiences. Downplaying the language of mysticism or metaphysics, he relies on science as a descriptive tool instead. From chaos theory to quantum mechanics, from the minutest to the gargantuan, everything permeates everything. The idea of interconnection regardless of our ethnicity, creed or ability especially appeals to him. The problem with the world is that we’ve been brought up for generations by the various value systems in which we happen to grew up in or subscribe to later in life, to see the operation of world as two separate opposing forces bent on overcoming the other instead as a function of equilibrium. Placed in a position of ‘us versus them’, it has resulted in much evil committed on nature and on humanity. It is perhaps in the areas of the sciences that a clearer picture and an objective view of how subjectively interesting and dynamically wonderful the world and our place in it can be arrived at sans the petty sentiments and irrational prejudices.
From his ink drawings on paper to mix media on canvas, Raj strove to blur the perceived polarity between the positive and negative or Yin and Yang that has shaped the way we come to frame the world and our approach to reality when in actuality, one cannot exist without the other. Raj muses that life and death are all but one and it is the walk that counts- that journey as we meander through the paths of life, the people we meet and the things we do. Raj reiterates that “We are all dust at the end. It is the journey that counts, whether safe, perilous or whatever we make it
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‘Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment.
It is the Ultimate truth that lies at the heart of Creation’
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Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
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