Curatorial Art Borneo 2025

M Faozi Yunanda M.Pd.“

Exploring Contemporary Visual Art within a Shared Ecological Consciousness (Issue):

“Non-Utilitarian Ecological Consumption”

Within the landscape of contemporary visual art, the exploration of ecological issues has increasingly gained significant attention and relevance. The growing reality of environmental crises ranging from deforestation and water pollution to climate change and other forms of degradation whose impacts are directly felt has prompted artists to reflect on the interconnected relationship between humans and nature through their artistic practices. Contemporary visual art, as a space of reflection and a mirror responding to developments in culture, technology, and social issues, is considered an ideal platform to accommodate the abundance of creativity generated through the artistic processes presented in this exhibition.

Exploration in contemporary visual art opens up new possibilities in the ways art is produced, experienced, and understood. It provides artists with broad space to transcend conventional boundaries by experimenting with diverse media, techniques, concepts, and meanings within their works.

The theme “Non-Utilitarian Ecological Consumption” becomes a point of convergence between ecological awareness and visual representation, opening a space for discussion on how art can articulate the dynamics of consumption and its impact on the environment. Within this framework, consumption is not understood merely as an economic human activity, but as an action that carries systemic consequences for global ecosystems. Through Non-Utilitarian Ecological Consumption, art also functions as a critical response to unsustainable patterns of consumption.

Global capitalism has produced a massive and aggressive culture of consumption that frequently disregards environmental consequences. Artists reveal how excessive consumption generates ecological imbalance, produces waste, and accelerates environmental degradation. Through visual practices, they question humanity’s dependence on the exploitation of natural resources, reframing consumption as an attitude that can be controlled or even redefined thereby cultivating a deeper awareness of the ecological impacts of everyday decisions.

These issues act as a magnet, drawing subjects into connection when they are responded to through artistic media, particularly visual art. The realities outlined above are offered openly to be engaged with by artists from Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam. Questions of whether these issues are contextual or directly related to the conditions of each country dissolve within a deeper concept of interconnectedness that envelops the discourse. From this, shared anxieties emerge, freely represented through artistic works, grounded in a strong essence that conveys both message and critique.

However, visual art is not merely a tool for criticism; it is also a medium for imagining the possibility of more sustainable futures. Through powerful visual narratives, art can awaken collective consciousness and inspire behavioural change. Artists working within the framework of Non-Utilitarian Ecological Consumption do not only contribute to discourse on environmental crises, but also present alternative messages that advocate for more responsible patterns of consumption. In an era where ecology has become an urgent concern, visual art holds significant potential to become part of the solution.

By integrating principles of sustainability into artistic practice, art can function as a space for reflection, critique, and hope envisioning a more harmonious relationship between humans and nature.

Catriona Maddocks“

Artworks from Malaysia: Akar (Roots)

Bringing together artists from three major regions of Malaysia Sabah, Sarawak, and Peninsular Malaysia the exhibition Akar highlights issues such as access to land, ecological loss, political marginalisation, and Indigenous knowledge. The works presented reveal the deep interconnection between the politics of memory, place, identity, and contemporary collective realities.

Embedded within each work is a sense of nostalgia not a romantic or sentimental nostalgia, but a critical one that questions how history is preserved, who preserves it, and what is lost when collective memory is eroded and resources are exploited. Through media including textiles, illustration, printmaking, film, photography, and the land itself, ancestral knowledge is presented not as a static archive, but as a living space that continues to be contested serving both as an anchor and a pathway towards resistance.

In these works, cultural heritage transforms into a form of protest, interrogating the possibilities that emerge through acts of remembering, reshaping, and reimagining.

Elroy Ramantan“

Living Borders, Breathing Worlds

Living Borders, Breathing Worlds presents six artists from Brunei whose works explore the interconnected themes of ecology, identity, and memory. Through visual art, film, collage, and illustration, the exhibition features Dystopia Through the Screen by Iman Shamsuddin, Heart Break of Borneo by Elroy Ramantan, Creator II by Maziyah Yussof, Roots Unveiled by Halim Ashari, The Sultanate of Tranquillity by Bella Kasnon, and The Botanical Map of Borneo by Susannah Anak Rogo Sitai Liew.

Curated by Elroy Ramantan, the exhibition approaches environmental issues not merely as ecological concerns, but as a living dialogue encompassing culture, politics, and struggles for survival. The artists were selected for their courage in confronting issues such as forced displacement, cultural erasure, and overdevelopment, while remaining grounded in respect for Brunei’s rich Indigenous ecological and cultural heritage.

Their works reflect the environment as both a space of belonging and a site of resistance: from distortions of digital worlds to deforestation in Borneo; from spiritual symbolism and cultural transitions to the quiet disappearance of species and knowledge. Together, they challenge us to perceive nature not as a distant wilderness, but as an inseparable part of human identity, memory, and lived struggle.