Yeo Workshop is pleased to present ‘Storytellers: Mythic Journeys and Modern Realities’, featuring artists Citra Sasmita, Filippo Sciascia, Quynh Dong, Maryanto, Fyerool Darma, and Anum Mohamed. Through both traditional techniques and innovative mediums, these storytellers weave narratives that connect ancient mythologies, mythic wisdom and contemporary reflections. The exhibition invites viewers to contemplate the intersections of myth, culture and modernity.
We introduce senior Malaysian Artist, Noor Mahnun Mohamed, also known as Anum who presents figurative and watercolour works that seamlessly blend domestic scenes with elements of realism, allegory, and whimsy. Through this, she weaves subtle psychological narratives with dark wit and emotional depth. Shaped by her background in architecture, Anum brings a unique perspective incorporating intricate geometric patterns inspired by both European and Southeast Asian architecture.
Using her own body as a medium to challenge cultural stereotypes, particularly around the exotic notions of Asia, Vietnamese artist Quynh Dong brings a live performance. Titled ‘0. (Zero Point)’, the performance, first conducted at Asia Now, sees Dong using her hair as a brush to complete a painting with black ink. She references Malevich’s Black Square, which in her performative adaptation, brings attention to the ‘zero Point’ of the female asian body. Critical of the histories that underpin the bodies of others’ having collaborated with artists and performers in the past, Dong uses her own body in this instance to question the reading of her work as necessarily autobiographical.
Maryanto, through his evocative works animates the tensions between cultural traditions that revere the sacredness of nature in Indonesia, and the harsh realities of its rapid urban development and uncompromising extraction of natural resources that are fast impinging on its physical and spiritual values. Maryanto has always been deeply invested in bringing greater exposure to the issues of corporatism, environmental devastation, and geopolitics from his home country and the broader region. Using a scratching technique, Maryanto creates powerful monochromatic paintings reminding us of the fast disappearing scenery and beauty in Indonesia engulfed by rapid industrialisation and unthinking ravaging of the land.
Citra Sasmita presents two works with horsehair, stemming from her deeply rooted feminist convictions and her determination to resist what she regards as the overweening patriarchalism of a conservative society. Her paintings are frequently dominated by female figures, often portrayed as the heroic protagonist in conjunction with potent symbols that have been selected from the primaeval realm of Balinese mysticism.
Presenting works from his Primitive Morning series and Tablet, Filippo Sciascia investigates concepts surrounding mankind’s development and civilization. Highly conceptual, Sciascia’s thematic explorations extend beyond conventional mediums, incorporating organic materials like melatonin powder, amber pigment, and volcanic ash in his works to express the primordial.
Fyerool Darma mediates Southeast Asian rural and urban culture with our new-age cosmopolitanism, developing object and material experimentations based on an extensive visual vocabulary drawn from popular culture, literature, the archives, the Internet, and his own life. Building on his ongoing Screenshot series, he proposes an environment for exploring a type of supra-locality – the cultural currency of textiles from the pre-modern to hyper-real. Drawing equally upon illusion and allusion, Fyerool interlaces and embroiders found images and texts from digital and other archival sources into a series of objects that oscillate between the realms of the digitally foraged and manually produced.
