Articles
Colours of the Wind
SHARIFAH ZURIAH AL-JEFFRI -- ART AS FAITH AND SEARCH FOR DIVINE TRUTH
LANDSCAPES are landscapes in art, but in Sharifah Zuriah Al-Jeffri's accomplished strokes, they are gentle poetic reminders of the beauty and sanctity of existence, of truth and tranquility, hope and healing.
They are intimations of mortality, touching on infinite feelings that resonate without sound.
From the awkward opened whorl of a lotus flower with a dignified stem in its mudflat "habitat" to the cascading crescendo of waterfalls, her expressive strokes are a study of contrast -- bold and tender, sensuous and evoking spirituality as in a prayer, with an innocence of purpose and spirit at odds with the sophisticated technique.
Her works are a celebration of life, or at least exude a glimmer of hope, even when at times the original emotions may spring from dismay or disgust, like in her tempest of vehement evocations of Quranic verses in her Bosnian series,
A year short of a 40-years painting career, Zu, as she is fondly known by, is one of Malaysia's most innovating of artists.
More than being the first indigenous Malay artist to paint competently in the Chinese brush painting tradition under the tutelage of the art wunderkind Anthony Sum from 1976-78, she gradually infuses into her repertoire Western aesthetics with Islamic philosophy through the appellations of the Ar-Rahim (The Compassion), the Al-Adi (The Just) and the As-Salam (The Source of Peace).
Her approach to Chinese art is not blind step-by-step copying, but an astute appropriation of technique, studying for instance, Zhang Daqian's (1899-1983). splash-ink techniques in his lotus when she started her lotus oeuvre in 1991 -- driven by a pacifist zeal for an end to the mayhem of Desert Storm of the first Gulf War. Hers is also not the conventional scroll format.
But it is her Bosnia-Herzegovina Series (December 1992) that strikes the viewer with the seismic force of her anger, sadness and impotence, at the "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslav enclave. Even then, there is the conciliatory call for closure, with lavish invocations of the Ha Mim and Rahim from the Surah 40-46 of the Quran.
She is no armchair opportunist exploiting the current issues of the day. Her works are a tissue from her heart, where she felt the pain and loss of the depredation.
Her Bosnian works were invited to international forum like the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, in June 1993, and led to her "tour of duty" in 1994 in refugee camps in war-torn Zagreb, Split and Dubrovnik. She had also been to the Kyber Pass and the Pakistani border town of Peshawar during the 1980 Afghan War.
Artist and poet, Zu is also a social activist, especially as a founding member of Sisters In Islam where she advocates gender issues like equality and justice.
She combines her social work that includes juvenile court counseller, with advocacy in art as a writer, curator and consultant.
Her Nature works, often a composite of real and imagined places and vegetation, are strong sacraments of environmental preservation. But they are not totally idealised vistas but one culled from her sensitivised and spiritualised crucible of memory and experience. She has joined various Nature painting exhibitions to the Belum (1994) and Taman Negara rainforests, and Tasik Cini.
So when she goes into rhapsody over "a new shoot of a plant, a new bloom, the changing colours of the leaves, the lofty mountains, gushing water and fluffy clouds", it is with the verve and vitality, the rhythms and rhymes of the colours of the wind.
A true humanist, Zu's works of Nature are imbued with the virtues of compassion, justice and peace. They have the effect of a catharsis as well as theraphy, but more so a prayer of communion, touching at the heart of life.
OOI KOK CHUEN
Art Writer/Critic
May 1, 2005.