Robb Report | Local artist Fyerool Darma on the Southeast Asian identity, embracing inauthenticity, and his work, ‘Kits

"From afar, it looked like a bizarre ski outfit: heavy, padded, and decorated with clashing prints all over. Get closer, however, and you would have seen a sleeping bag, fashioned into a jacket, and a pair of matching trousers, covered in patches of gaudy coloured fabric salvaged from regional locations that include Batam, Bangkok and Singapore. On each arm were iron-on flags that appeared to be of no particular country, but a mash-up of the Indonesian, Malaysian, and Filipino emblems.

 

This was Kitschmensch With Many Failed Flags of 1963 Maphilindo Confederation (Reworked) by local artist Fyerool Darma, presented at the inaugural Art SG fair just held in January. Its title makes an obscure reference to a union of Malaysia (then Malaya), Indonesia, and the Philippines proposed in 1963 by then Filipino president Diosdado Macapagal. The Maphilindo Confederation lasted only a month before it was dissolved due to conflicting interests of the member countries.

 

Kitschmensch is an enquiry into the idea of collective regionality—a commonality in the Southeast Asian identity that, as idealised by Maphilindo, deserves to be unified. But defining that identity is a challenge. If one were to believe what one sees on the Internet, then the region is a sunny paradise for budget travellers overrun by chaotic street markets hawking the cheap, colourful spoils of mass consumerism. In other words, kitschy."