In Art Basel 2022, Silverlens presents the work of Kota Kinabalu-born-and-based artist Yee I-Lann in the Feature and Unlimited sectors. I-Lann’s practice has consistently spoken to urgencies in the contemporary world, from the vantage point of where she is from, mining personal story, Southeast Asian cultures and histories, local knowledge, critical theory, and mass aesthetics and experience.

Since 2018, Yee I-Lann has been collaborating with Dusun and Murut weavers in the Keningau interior and with Bajau Sama Dilaut weavers from Pulau Omadal, Semporna to make tikar – woven mats. In the process, a craft community bound to the tourist market has found opportunities for innovation, and a village community has turned from fishing to weaving, in turn reducing pressure on the Coral Triangle. A unique language of making has developed, bringing the weavers’ skills, knowledge and stories together with Yee’s ideas and propositions, often making strong statements calling for a politics of inclusion: “This body of work claims and celebrates communities and their geographies, often at the peripheries, that give shape to the center.”

Many languages meet for presentation: the digital pixel and the tikar weave, traditional and contemporary motifs, popular song, bodily gesture and sound, photographic image, script, positioning art-making and aesthetics as a means of bridging and understanding diverse experiences and stories.

For the Feature sector, Yee I-Lann will be presenting five works, including two new tikar in bamboo pus. The Tukad Kad Sequence #4 (2022) is part of a body of seven tikar exploring architectural space as a meeting or trigger point between the personal and public, between new and old knowledges. The Dancing Queen (2022) is the latest of Yee’s “karaoke mats” which pay tribute to popular karaoke songs shared across communities and cultures – this one is made for a girls’ night out.

A performance-based video work, PANGKIS (2021), incorporates the woven bamboo pus sculpture 7-Headed Lalandau Hat and a collaboration with Kota Kinabalu-based Tagaps Dance Theatre, probing masculinity, anxiety and politics, while Tikar Reben (2020), a pandanus “ribbon mat” carrying a lexicon of Bajau weaving patterns, will be shown with the video Tikar Reben (2021) documenting the rolling out of the tikar across the 54m divide between the Bajau Sama DiLaut weavers’ water village and Pulau Omadal, as a powerful celebration of shared cultural identity across a geopolitical landscape marked by prejudice.

In Unlimited, I-Lann presents Tikar/Meja — a collection of 60 Bajau Sama DiLaut mats on which have been woven 60 tables. The mats will be installed in a loose grid, 4 pieces high x 15 pieces wide, on a 30 x 4 meter wall. The table is a representation of administrative power and control – colonial, patriarchal, federal, state power. They are the opposite of the non-hierarchical, community-based, open platform of the tikar. Tikar/Meja forms a message from the people on the mat to the people at the table: The table can be rolled up, “eaten” by the mat. Like in a game of rock, paper, scissors.

“Traditionally in the Southeast Asia region, all communities sat on mats on the ground, had a tradition of making mats. Thetikar, or mat, for me, is intrinsically feminist, representing a communal, egalitarian power that comes from old knowledges, heritage, culture.”

Yee I-Lann is one of Southeast Asia’s leading figures in the visual arts, participating in major international exhibitions since the 1990s. Recent exhibitions include Until We Hug Again (CHAT Mill6, Hong Kong) and Borneo Heart (SICC, Kota Kinabalu), Afro-Southeast Asian Affinities during a Cold War (Vargas Museum, Manila), the 10th Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (QAGOMA, Brisbane) and the inaugural Indian Ocean Craft Triennial.

Yee I-Lann (b.1971, Kota Kinabalu; lives and works in Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah) primarily photomediabased practice engages with archipelagic Southeast Asia’s turbulent history with works addressing issues of colonialism and neo-colonialism, power, and the impact of historical memory in social experience, often with particular focus on counter-narrative “histories from below”. She employs a complex, multi-layered visual vocabulary drawn from historical references, popular culture, archives, and everyday objects. She has in recent years started working collaboratively with sea-based and land-based communities and indigenous mediums in Sabah. She is a co-founding associate of The Ricecooker Archives: Southeast Asian Rock ’n’ Roll Treasury with her partner Joe Kidd and has worked as a production designer in the Malaysian film industry. She is currently a Board member for Forever Sabah and Tamparuli Living Arts Center (TaLAC), both based in Sabah.

I-Lann has worked in art department and as a production designer in the Malaysian film industry since 1994 and between 2003-2008 established the production design department and lectured at Akademi Seni Budaya dan Warisan Kebangsaan (ASWARA). With her partner, rock n roll subculture archivist, musician and designer Joe Kidd they share KerbauWorks a cross-discipline project label and space. She is currently a Board member for Forever Sabah and Tamparuli Living Arts Center (TaLAC), both based in Sabah and a co-founding partner of KOTA-K Studio in Tanjung Aru Old Town, Kota Kinabalu.