Affectionately known as Anum in the Malaysian arts community, Noor Mahnun is a painter, curator, writer as well as an educator. Born in 1964, Kelantan, she graduated with a Master’s degree in Fine Art from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Braunschweig, Germany in 1996.
Since returning to Malaysia at the end of 1997, she began her versatile career in the arts working as a graphic designer, mounting her first solo exhibition in Malaysia as an artist as well as participating in group shows in 1998, and later started teaching in several local institutions until now since 1999.
Noor Mahnun was an artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan, in Kuang, Selangor from 2000 to 2001. The programme was concluded with an exhibition of paintings produced on site and inspired by the location during her residency there in 2001. From 2006 to 2012, she worked as an Arts Manager at Rimbun Dahan.
She was awarded, by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from 2002 to 2003, to undertake a printmaking course at Il Bisonte, Florence, Italy under the Italian Government Scholarship Programme.
Upon completing the scholarship programme in Florence, she returned to Kuala Lumpur and ventured into curatorial work at Valentine Willie Fine Art from 2003 to 2005 where she organised a total of ten exhibitions by Malaysian and Southeast Asian contemporary artists as well contributed her writings for the shows.
Noor Mahnun has written over 30 essays and reviews for numerous art shows in Malaysia and also wrote a paper entitled Printmaking Archive for Reference, Research, and Regional Link for the Nippon Foundation Fellowships for Asian Public Intellectuals fellows book called Encountering Asian New Horizon: Contesting and Negotiating in Fluid Transitions The Work of 2012-2013, which was published in 2015.
Her talent does not end there, Noor Mahnun is proficient in three languages: Bahasa Malaysia, English and German. Her proficiency in German language has led to various work such as her participation in German-Malay translation workshops with Holger Warnk and Hedy Holzwarth, lecturers at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main Institute for East Asian Philology, Southeast Asia Science, organised by Goethe-Institut Malaysia in 2007.
Noor Mahnun has also designed the book cover for a publication entitled Ingin Sebebas Burung/Flugversuch, Antologi Dwibahasa Cerpen Malaysia dan Jerman Zweisprachige/Anthologie Malaysischer und Deutscher Kurzgeschichten, which also included the editing of essays as she was also one of the translators working on the book. The project was coordinated by Goethe-Institut Malaysia with publisher Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia.
Noor Mahnun advances her artistic career by presenting an 11th solo exhibition entitled Disco Lombok Still Life by Noor Mahnun at The Edge Galerie from November 23 until December 10 2017. A total of 60 artworks comprising 20 oil on linen paintings and 40 drawings on paper will be on display. The show’s intriguing title offers a glimpse of Noor Mahnun’s alternative approach to the idea of exhibition making.
Still Life
When observing Noor Mahnun’s paintings, on the surface they appear to be European in style - still life paintings featuring single domesticated, inanimate objects illustrated in the academic method - or figurative and portrait oil paintings that resemble the works of German painter Otto Dix (1891-1969), who fused elements of realism, allegory, and the whimsical. Except that Noor Mahnun’s depiction of the human figure on canvas is devoid of any emotions, focusing on physicality rather than expressiveness. Her time spent in Europe has been most influential in the development of style and characteristics.
In unravelling the context of Noor Mahnun’s artwork, it can be read as self-expression: an archive of memories in an attempt to eternalise selected episodes of her life. Her choice of subject matters in Disco Lombok Still Life are the ordinary coffee moka pot; butter and steak knives; dustpan and brush; scissors; white gloves; and sunglasses, yet the narratives of these objects are deeply personal.
For instance, in an artwork entitled Butter Knife, the knife is a gift by one of Noor Mahnun’s architecture students at the department of architecture in Universiti Malaya where she was lecturing part-time in 2015. Delighted for the gift yet anxious about superstitions and what gifting knives symbolise: severing friendships, Noor Mahnun decides to reimburse her student with a small token fee in exchange for the souvenir as an act of preserving their friendship.
The Tiara signifies cleanliness and professionalism. During Noor Mahnun’s travel to Japan between 2012 and 2013 for the Nippon Foundation Grant for Asian Public Intellectuals as a senior fellowship to research on Digital Archive for Printmaking, she noticed people from different professions were wearing them: from police officers, taxi and bus drivers to bellboys.
“Apparently there is a story about white gloves when The Beatles came to Japan in 1966. The police in charge of security came up with the idea of wearing gloves to add a layer of ‘propriety’ between hands and fans, when the duty of each officer was to hold back the enthusiastic crowd” said Noor Mahnun.
Interestingly, an article entitled White gloves by Alice Gordenker was published in The Japan Times on March 19 2013 about a fascinated reader who wrote to Gordenker to express his curiosity on the white gloves phenomenon in Japan.
Noor Mahnun’s depiction of domesticity is presented in small rectangular format - a reflection of the woman with the paintbrush - dainty and well ordered. Evident in her work is her obsessive fascination for geometric patterns, perhaps a therapeutic means to escape the chaos of her daily schedule of organising art events, teaching and/or writing about art.
“When I first arrived in Berlin in the early-Eighties and visited the Neue Nationalgalerie, I was in awe by the architecture of Mies van der Rohe: the iron pillars, beams, columns. The building is much better seen and experienced in real life. My interest for patterns and tiles started.” explained Noor Mahnun.
Illustrated in Dustpan, Noor Mahnun employs repetitive geometric patterns as a backdrop to the good old brush and dustpan, which is presented as a triptych. The task of creating the composition from basic lines is derived from Noor Mahnun’s interest in architecture.
“I chose basic home wares as subject matters because I enjoy domesticity and doing house chores like cleaning, sewing and ironing. I like being at home, perhaps that is why (incidentally) my work studio is located above my apartment unit, which is convenient,” said Noor Mahnun.
Becoming Zen
In an artwork entitled Rooster and Head, Noor Mahnun uses the image of Gandhara Buddha head paired with a rooster in a box.
“The Gandhara Buddha is culturally significant because it is an artistic manifestation of early Buddha statues – the Gandhara region being a meeting point between the classical Greek style and Buddhist art, a cultural crossroads of influences which I find interesting,” said Noor Mahnun. “But when I started the painting I paired these two objects together purely out of a random (visual) act. The head was seen in Singapore about the art of ethnographic museum display exhibition. The rooster was sighted in a newspaper article. Somehow placing the two on a picture plane together seems apt. The readings were formed later. Could go in many ways and tangent …”
“My master’s degree paper was about Leon Battista Alberti, his idea on ‘Disegno’, written under the subject of Aesthetic Philosophy. He is definitely a typical Renaissance man. A humanist, author, artist, architect, linguist, mathematician, poet, priest, philosopher and cryptographer,” recalled Noor Mahnun who is a fan of the Renaissance period.
In another painting entitled Postcard from Tumpat (40 x 120 cm), Noor Mahnun illustrates the iconic sleeping Buddha, in Wat Photivihan a temple located in Kampung Jambu, Tumpat, situated north of Kota Bharu, Kelantan. Measuring 40 metres, the statue is said to be the longest in Southeast Asia.
“I was trying to capture the naivety of the sculpture. Of being at peace or resting. Which brings to mind Goya’s Sleep of Reason, a favourite artwork. I was also thinking of a painting I saw in Tokyo by Takanobu Kobayashi. But of course the ‘recline’ theme recurs in the arts, the Etruscan (tomb) murals and the figures on top of their sarcophagi for example. I find it all intriguing.”
Disco Lombok
“All of my past solo exhibitions have been associated with a musical performance. I like singing and dancing. Music does play an important part in my life.”
Thus, disco in this show represents her student days. “The mid-Eighties through the early Nineties were spent in Germany at the height of the rave culture there,” explained Noor Mahnun who witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall as a student in 1989. In the spirit of egalitarianism, techno music unified people from East and West Berlin.
The significance of Lombok in this exhibition relates to the collaborative effort between Noor Mahnun and Dina Zaman, the writer of bestseller ‘I Am Muslim’. The Very Clever King of Lombok is a short story derived from a folk tale about the legend of the island king. 40 drawings displayed in this exhibition is part of the complete compilation, a work-in-progress as she is still collecting visual research/images to corresponds with the text accordingly.
“I am hoping to use the sales proceeds of the Lombok series to visit the island as I continue to visually research for the illustrations of the short story. The Very Clever King of Lombok got me deeper, into wanting to know more, about the Wallace Line between the islands of Lombok and Bali. I have always been a fan of Alfred Russell Wallace so it was a good and happy coincidence when Dina approached me with the project. In Volume One of Wallace’s ‘The Malay Archipelago, the land of the orang-utan and the bird of paradise’ Chapter XII was solely about ‘Lombock: How the Rajah Took the Census’. The book itself was dedicated to Charles Darwin.” chirped Noor Mahnun.
Postcard, Blooms and Squids
Measuring 57 x 76 cm, Postcard from Delhi is a drawing produced using graphite and watercolour on paper depicting a postcard received by Noor Mahnun from her friend, graphic designer Lim Oon Soon. Noor Mahnun illustrates realistically the card as well as the message written on it in watercolour.
In its actual format, this work demonstrates Noor Mahnun’s impeccable skills as well as her aptitude for detail. Divided into two parts, the front of the postcard, “a reproduction of an old miniature painting”, is depicted on the left side of the paper, composed at the centre of a laboriously designed grid patterns in graphite as background. On the left side, she immaculately illustrates the reverse side of the postcard, which features a handwritten message – complete with stamp and sender’s drawing.
Also featured in this show are six watercolour paintings depicting female portraits adorning flowers such as lady’s slipper orchids, tiger lily, frangipani and camellia. Noor Mahnun portrays herself in six personas decorated with various blooms and wearing different hairstyles. Noor Mahnun jokes that being a model for her own work is an easy feat because “my model is always punctual”.
Another quintessential theme in Noor Mahnun’s creative oeuvre is the depiction of squid and insect such as beetle, wasp and moth. Insect has been a favourite subject alongside geometric patterns since her days in Berlin.
In Disco Lombok Still Life, Noor Mahnun also showcases eight drawings of squids on paper.
“The squid, against a repetitive pattern rendered in pencil works on paper, obsession started when I took part in ‘My Story, My Strength: Doodle for Change’, an exhibition in aid of WCC (Women Center fo Change), Georgetown, Penang in 2015. At first, I wanted to convey the perseverance and patience of those women whose lives are affected by abuse,” explained Noor Mahnun, but in the process of doing the work, the rendering became an obsession, and I got addicted to drawing not only the cuttlefish, but the patience testing, long attention span this series demanded. I have always done patterns, but not in smaller details. What was supposed to be an arduous and challenging task became a delightful occupation. I could go on rendering for hours. The ‘squid’ backfires, I supposed. Squid was chosen because it is languid in the way that it moves. It’s smooth, slippery. But it could also swim speedily. Passive. Aggressive. The shape, phallic, brings connotations. Being a printmaker, I have always admired Hokusai’s work and one of them featured an octopus and a woman. It is sensual, and I think sensibility is the right word to describe it,” said Noor Mahnun.
Noor Mahnun is referring to The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, a woodblock print created in 1814 by renowned Edo period Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker, Hokusai (1760-1849). The image depicts a woman wrapped in the limbs of two octopuses performing erotic intercourse with her. Inscribed above the image in Japanese calligraphy is a text, which expresses the woman and the creatures’ mutual carnal pleasure.
From charity to community
As a devoted cultural ambassador, Noor Mahnun has dedicated her time and energy for education and to spread social awareness by collaborating with organisations such as the Malaysian AIDS Foundation, Women’s Centre for Change Penang and Sisters in Islam.
Noor Mahnun has curated several art exhibitions to raise funds for the charity such as Art for Nature for WWF Malaysia, ArtAid16 Love for Sale in 2016 and ArtAid17 Bebas (Freedom) in 2017 in support of the Malaysian Aids Council.
In November 2017, Noor Mahnun curated and participated a group exhibition of 21 artists entitled Hell, Heaven at Cult Gallery in Kuala Lumpur in collaboration with Sisters in Islam, an organisation that promotes women’s rights “within the frameworks of Islam and universal human rights”.
Noor Mahnun’s latest endeavour is as a curatorial consultant for Think City Johor Bahru working with Iskandar Malaysia Community Public Art programme - a joint initiative with Iskandar Regional Development Authority, Think City and Bandung Creative City Forum – requires her expertise in residency programming from her experience working at Rimbun Dahan.
With all these cultural activities on her plate, one wonders how Noor Mahnun manages her time to produce artworks or even for some downtime. Leading up to Disco Lombok Still Life, I had the privilege of visiting her studio and having numerous discussions over lunch, and I found that Noor Mahnun never leaves studio without her schedule book, sticky notes, notebooks and writing tools; scribbling every important detail on it (dates, appointments, to do lists, ideas and sketches): a habit that keeps her prompt for our meetings. Noor Mahnun is indeed a brilliant and independent woman whose art is not just confined to geometric patterns but also includes educational and cultural endeavours, a challenging task not accomplished by many artists.
