Hello, come in, it’s so good to see you! Welcome to “Open House”.

“Open House” commemorates the opening of HARTA space. HARTA was founded with the purpose of giving back to the arts community, by preserving and sharing Malaysian treasure.

For us Malaysians, open houses hold profound significance. These festive celebrations are steeped with tradition and welcome family, friends and even new acquaintances.

As with any modern society, the meaning of our domestic spaces has evolved throughout recent history. The pandemic has only accelerated our changing definitions of home—home has become both a space for rest, isolation and protection, and a space for work. It’s a place for intimate relationships as well as a base for connecting to wider online social networks. We are, arguably, spending more time at home than ever, transforming it from personal and family sanctuary to a dynamic habitat.

The “Open House” exhibition explores the domestic sphere as an inspirational and aspirational space, offering a closer look at the treasure of everyday. It features works by artists Azzah Sultan, Bayu Utomo, Chong Yan Chuah, James Seet, Nadirah Zakariya, Raimi Sani, Yuki Tham, Gan Tee Sheng, Fawwaz Sukri, Umi Baizurah as well as works from HARTA’s own collection from artists Ahmad Zakii Anwar, Jalaini Abu Hassan, Atiqah Khairul Anwar, Ismail Awi, Lee Long Looi and Yee I-Lann. Employing practices such as oil painting, charcoal, ceramic, weaving, game technology, sculpture, videography, photography and installation, these artists have reimagined our relation to the materials, appliances, technology and themes that surround us in our homes.

In his new book, The Philosophy of the House: Domestic Space and Happiness (2021), Emanuele Coccia observes that: “The home is a space in which all objects live as subjects … We’ve accumulated things to appropriate a space, to build an identity, to preserve memories, to embody people and events, to set up rituals. Homes are personal museums that allow us to discover and contemplate our soul as it lives outside our bodies, circulates, and breathes in each of the things that surround us, even the most insignificant, even the least beautiful.”

This exhibition, much like a home, is divided into several “rooms”. We invite you, our guests to “Open House”, to roam as you please, and delve into the multifaceted nature of domestic spaces, exploring the many narratives, objects, technology, emotions, and histories on display.

Kitchen: Rituals of The Everyday

Perhaps there’s no better place to start than with the kitchen. It is often considered the heart of a home.

As the curator, I deliberately selected works for this space that lack figures. I wanted to try to decouple a certain conventional division of labour, one which places women in domestic kitchens as cooks and valorises men in professional kitchens or competitions as chefs. Media scholar Rebecca Swenson, in “Domestic Divo? Televised Treatments of Masculinity, Femininity and Food” (2009), argues that “The divide between the public and private sphere is no longer feasible or desirable for most men and women. Identifying individual and institutional led solutions is in the best interest of both genders, and to do this, it is necessary to continue examining the masculinities and femininities constructed around specific household tasks”.

Many contemporary artists have done precisely this by making the kitchen visible in different ways, prompting audiences to question how and why domestic ideals are constructed and maintained, but also, in the process, unpacking our food culture, which is always more than just about nutrition but also about “care” and generational knowledge in the largest sense of the word.

Nadirah Zakariya’s living installation sits in front of her photography marking the passing, fragility, and preciousness of time. Both the flowers and the food are perishable. The living installation changes day by day, as each bloom goes through its life cycle. All Purpose Flower MCO Day 59, Instant Comfort, Eat My Heart Out I &II and Handle With Care, shot during the lockdown in the artist’s own home, offers a close look at her surroundings. Her compositions aptly capture our complicated feelings and actions (fear, panic-buying, reflection, meditation, longing, appreciation of beauty) during the MCO.

Ahmad Zaki’s 1996 still life Untitled invites a moment of quiet reflection and alludes to the histories that lie in our space. Jailani Abu Hassan’s (Jai) Dapur Senandung in sepia tones contrasts with Ismail Alwi’s A Day to Remember (Serendipity) , bursting with life, depicts the varied kitchen scenes and landscapes within Malaysia. Jai’s Kenduri Kendara Periuk Belanga reminds us how the kitchen plays a vital role in building community, with periuk belanga (traditional earthenware) being a symbol in Malay weddings. Atiqah Khairul Anwar’s Wang Saku II alludes to the silent economies inherent within domesticity—invisible, unpaid or underpaid labour. 

Living Room: Memory and the Future of Domesticity

This section opens with an invitation to audiences to reflect on the power of nostalgia and the emotional weight carried by familiar surroundings. 

James Seet’s whimsical Renaissance Series: Remembrance and New Life is made from offcuts from carpenters, ceramic pieces and unused elements from his house, along with old wooden chairs that are damaged or no longer functional. As the artist explained, “I am deeply affected by the words of my mother: ‘What is old is obsolete and to be discarded.’ Her perspective, while understandable, as she is in her 90s, is one that I cannot subscribe to. Instead, I have taken her metaphor and turned it on its head, using it as a springboard for my latest work… Through my art, I am breathing new life into these objects and giving them a new purpose.” James’ art is more than a repurposing of unused material, but a reflection of his journey navigating negative spaces whilst finding the unique beauty and positivity within them, creating something new out of what was once considered old and obsolete.

Chong Yan Chuah’s BLOODY MEMORIES, Remembrance via Dioramas is the result of his memory of the domestic spaces he’s inhabited and his practice of architectural design. Guests are encouraged to play and engage with his work, a virtual domestic space that redefines the boundaries of what a home can be. Chong Yan says: “Architecture is the purposeful manipulation of space to influence human behaviour and generate cultural meaning. As we begin to live our lives online and design within virtual environments, the idea of ‘space’ as the physical environment in which we can walk, and touch, might be somewhat limiting. I’ll include online space, literary space, and remembered space as powerful territories that increasingly shape our behaviours and cultures. Intervening in these spaces means rearranging the tangled relationships between people, systems, and landscape. Architecture in practice is shaped by human beings in all our complexity and contradiction. Fragmentary desires and competing systems pull the spaces of our existence in all directions.”

The game features an elevated compound in an imaginary and virtual world: complete with weather changes, sound, 3D coveted objects appropriated from the internet, references to his own childhood as well as 3D scanned objects from his actual home (bookcases, artwork, ceramic pieces and furniture). The player has access to a first person-view of the space and can choose to explore, run and zoom in on vignettes. The dioramas on the wall are captured from the game, drawn on and stickered with familiar emojis, displayed in a line—snapshots filled with symbols of personhood.

One is reminded of the technologies we use within our homes: our TVs that are increasingly smarter than us, home systems we can talk to, social media and entire virtual worlds of fictional gaming and reality. Social media like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, as Emanuele Coccia explains, are “virtual living rooms that allow us to cohabit with dozens of people, bypassing the experience of the city.” These virtual spaces are in essence an extended home—enabling us to live and share with people who aren’t family, to mix reality and fiction, to present an image and live in it. Prompting the question: how will our evolving virtual lives shape the physical homes of tomorrow?

Bedroom: Domesticity and Identity

We come to the bedroom, where audiences encounter stories of self-expression and cultural heritage, and the negotiation of public and private identities.  

Bayu Utomo’s charcoal and acrylic work, INFINITY X is part of his private collection. The work grapples with the complexities of the male body and the Malay male protagonist through Bayu’s signature style—personal figurative realism, trademark brushstrokes, strong composition, capturing movement and intense emotions. Raimi Sani’s “Atelphobia” [Fear of Not Being Good Enough] juxtaposes INFINITY X, showcasing figurative realism of a woman and her child in intimate prayer. Raimi’s play with light, form and painterly brushstrokes reproduces the mixed feelings within the moment.

Azzah Sultan’s video work Gelang is part of an upcoming series titled Anak Dara (Virgin). The video depicts the act of putting on jewellery, with her hands translucently set in the foreground and traditional batik as the background. The video, slow and intentional, induces anticipation and anxiety. At 4:49, the video shifts: her hands are now the same pattern as the background before, moving quickly as she begins removing her jewellery. The batik in the background has also changed—black with gold flowers. By the end of the video, Azzah expresses the intricacies and complexities of navigating womanhood through cultural stigmas. Lee Long Looi’s mixed medium Space-Space presents a small but intimate window of married life. With textured lines, different forms and contrasting colours, Space-Space represents the nuances of union—the space both physical and emotional, between the two figures.

Gan Tee Sheng’s Moment sits next to Fawwaz Sukri’s The Thinker (after Rodin), both painted in 2020 during the pandemic. Gan’s Moment features a figure lost in a reverie on his bed. Moment is rife with life, even if it is still, reflecting the intricate relationships between individuals, their domestic spaces and the animals, objects and creations within them. Fawwaz’s The Thinker (after Rodin) is collage pop art of acrylic and gel. His work is layered, interweaving events that lead to the dystopian central female figure and the paraphernalia she is donning (a space helmet, the gun mock gun with the Malaysian flag). The Thinker (after Rodin) captures both the anxieties, apathies and dissolution in isolation during Covid-19.

Yuki Tham’s Vague invites guests to reflect on the act of getting ready and confronting oneself in the mirror. Her oil painting features the back of a veiled female figure, her face reflected in the vanity, both powerful and insecure. I am reminded of how reflections are represented in literature as portals into a more truthful version of the world than our own, where we are forced to look at, often with mental gymnastics, the paradoxes of being.

Garden: The Politics of Home and Beyond

Beyond personal realms, domestic spaces are deeply entwined with political, social, and economic structures. Gardens have historically distilled our attitudes towards the natural world and our communities.

Umi Baizurah’s Uncharted Wild series presents mixed medium ceramic sculptures in animal-like forms entwined with jewellery, steel elements, wire cables and electrical components. The series was made from her observations on the complex relationships between humans, animals and the objects we use in our everyday lives. In her words, “I was intrigued by the combination of plant-like forms, animals and machine components masquerading as new mutated creatures; the possibility to display a paradox disguised as a weapon or ornament.” Her series reminds us how our searching and building for habitats have impacted the natural world—a rallying call to live more sustainably.

Environmentalist Peter Berg offers the concept of bioregionalism, which is an awareness of the many life forms of each place and how they are interrelated, including with humans. Our “citizenship” in a bioregion means not only familiarity with the local ecology but a commitment to stewarding it together.

Expanding on bioregionalism, Yee I-Lann’s & (black), & (white), Exploding & (black), Exploding & (white) are tikar pieces with weaving by Lili Naming. These woven mat works are from the touring exhibition “Yee I-Lann & Collaborators: Borneo Heart” which opened in Sabah in 2021. The cooperative processes of weaving knowledge, collaborating, and empowering local Sabahan weavers and using local materials—split bamboo plus weave—are essential to producing I-Lann’s tikar works. In domestic settings and in the community, tikar are multifunctional for all forms of communion: sitting, praying, eating and gathering representing an “egalitarian, communal politics,” as the artist asserts.

In an interview with Art & Market, I-Lann said: “In my work, it becomes a way of thinking about sharing space, as well as a platform for collective storytelling and activation … What I am trying to do by using weaving and mats is to change the way we look at how we behave architecturally, and also how we use language. I am talking about political wellbeing and sustenance: political structure, social relationships, empowerment, domestic economies, circular economies.”

By emphasising the shared tikar in her art, I-Lann has exploded the “&”, showing us the possibilities and significance of collaboration in creating local systems that are regenerative and restorative.

Jailani Abu Hassan’s acrylic Bunga Cinta conveys appreciation for our natural environments. Amidst a time of environmental crisis, gardens are not merely green spaces but can be sites for community building and activism. An exhibition in Germany titled “Garden Futures: Designing with Nature” (2023) features Malaysia’s own Kebun-Kebun Bangsar, a free public garden and communal farm. The farm is run by volunteers, turning local residents’ kitchen scraps into compost to grow crops. The crops are then donated to soup kitchens and the underprivileged around the city. Kebun-Kebun Bangsar is an example of Jai’s Bunga Cinta in practice.

“Open House” prompts visitors to reflect on the significance of the spaces we call home. It invites us to embrace the familiar, re-evaluate the mundane, and imagine new possibilities for what we want from domesticity. By examining the intimate corners of our lives, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the intricate tapestry that weaves together our shared human experience within the walls of our houses.