Photos: All photos are credited to En. Ameruddin Ahmad
Peti Seni, National Art Gallery Malaysia, 2005
Introduction
In 2005, I presented Peti Seni at the National Art Gallery Malaysia. This installation transformed a cabin-like structure into an open space of reflection, using fragile paper “flags” inscribed with the 99 Names of God alongside cuttings from daily newspapers. Visitors were invited to participate in an open workshop, making their own flags from old newspapers and simple A4 sheets, which they then planted on the floor and walls of the cabin. Peti Seni became a collective work where faith, identity, media, and impermanence intertwined. Looking back, it marked my first major spatial installation, a turning point that laid the foundation for later explorations of migration, hybridity, and the shifting line between the sacred and the everyday.
Main text
When visitors stepped into Peti Seni, they entered a cabin whose walls were already lined with fragile paper flags — the 99 Names of God written one by one, pinned with satay sticks, side by side with flags cut from daily newspapers. Names like Ar-Rahman (The Compassionate), Al-Hakim (The Wise), Al-Batin (The Hidden), Az-Zahir (The Manifest), Al-Adl (The Just), and Al-Ghafur (The Forgiving) hung in delicate rows, alongside others such as Al-Qahhar (The Subduer) and Al-Muntaqim (The Avenger) — reminders that the divine is not only mercy but also power, justice, and awe. Sacred in origin, these names also carried the weight of archetypes — qualities that reached beyond religion, touching memory, imagination, and the collective unconscious. Their presence alongside newspapers and children’s handmade flags created a dialogue between devotion, politics, and play.
The work grew further through an open workshop organized with the help of Amerrudin Ahmad and staff from the National Art Gallery. Children came in, sat with old newspapers, simple A4 papers, and colors, cutting and painting their own flags before planting them on the floor and walls of the cabin. Their contributions blended with the flags I had already installed, creating a rhythm between the sacred names, political headlines, splashes of color, and improvised gestures. Over time, the structure filled with layered voices: prayers, fragments of news, children’s drawings — fragile yet full of energy. Authorship dissolved into something collective.
What was ironic is that during the workshop I was invited for an interview with a journalist elsewhere in the gallery building. When I left, the cabin was almost empty, with hardly anyone inside. But when I returned a couple of hours later, the space had been transformed. The walls and floor were suddenly filled with children’s flags, layered among my own. In my absence, the work had grown, shifted, and become something else entirely. I felt a deep joy in seeing people participate and engage with the work, but at the same time there was also the realization of losing control — or perhaps recognizing that too much control is an illusion. The best thing to do was simply to let go. That moment struck me deeply — if a couple of hours could so completely change the atmosphere, what could two days, two years, or twenty years do?
At the same time, outside the gallery, another struggle over words and symbols was unfolding. In Denmark, where I was living, the Prophet cartoon controversy erupted, sparking global debates on freedom of expression, sensitivity, and violence. Protests filled the streets, flags were burned, lines were drawn. I was living then in Balloon Park in Amager — a former army barracks once used to test cannons and later to house German refugees during the final months of World War II. Surrounded by that charged history, the controversy struck me deeply. I sat down to write my thoughts, which were later published by the Danish newspaper Information in the book Muslim Dagbog (Muslim Diary), alongside contributions from others.
For me, the connection to Peti Seni is clear. Both were about how words and symbols live in the world — how they can wound, divide, and provoke, but also how they can be shared, repeated, and transformed. Inside the cabin in Kuala Lumpur, the words were not weapons but invitations: fragile flags mixing prayers with headlines, children’s play with history, belief with impermanence. The work became a mirror of the wider struggle I was living through — caught between Malaysia and Denmark, between faith and freedom, between the sacred and the everyday.
Looking back, Peti Seni was the moment when I began to see space itself as a medium — not just an empty container, but a field where identities, beliefs, and contradictions could be lived out together. The cabin was fragile, temporary, and collective. It still echoes in everything I do.
I can also see now how Peti Seni planted the seeds for many of my later works. The fragile flags and children’s participation anticipated my use of stamps, passports, gauze, and kompang made from x-rays — materials that invite touch, repetition, and collective authorship. The interplay of the sacred and the everyday, of personal memory and political context, continues to shape how I work today. In that sense, Peti Seni was not only my first major installation, but also a quiet blueprint for the questions of identity, impermanence, and belonging that I am still exploring.
“Read more about my upcoming exhibition Rhythms of Identity →”
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