ONE day before its official opening, a group of Malaysian and Indonesian artists withdrew today from the Kuala Lumpur Biennale (KL Biennale) 2017, claiming that their artworks have been removed from the exhibition. 

The group, a collaboration of five Malaysians from Pusat Sekitar Seni (PSS) and two Indonesians from Population Project, had produced an installation entitled Under Construction.

PSS spokesman Aisyah Baharuddin said the KL Biennale 2017 curator told them that police visited the National Visual Arts Gallery (NVAG) yesterday and confiscated several artworks installed for the exhibition. 

Aisyah said the artwork allegedly contained “elements of communism”.

“This violates our rights as artists and we have decided to pull out from the KL Biennale 2017,” she told The Malaysian Insight. 

There is no information on the whereabouts of the artwork, with no cooperation given by the organisers on the matter, she said.

A source told The Malaysian Insight that police who came to the national gallery were accompanied by officers from the Home and Tourism and Culture Ministries. The source, however, refused to divulge details on the matter.

Another source said police acted based on complaints from the public. 

A spokesman for NVAG also declined to comment on the matter, saying an official statement will be issued soon. 

The Malaysian Insight has contacted police for further explanation. 

PSS is also expected to hold a press conference tomorrow. 

Tourism and Culture Minister Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz will officiate KL Biennale 2017, a mega-scale international contemporary arts programme organised by the National Arts Gallery of Malaysia, at 10 am. 

The other PSS artists are Ahmad Azrel Kilheeny, Mohamad Idham Ismail, Nurul Adeline Zainuddin and Iltizam Iman Abd Jalil while the two Indonesian artists are Isrol Triono from Yogyakarta and Selo Srie Mulyadi from Jakarta.

Earlier this year, an artwork by Sabahan artist Suddin Lappo was “temporarily” taken down from the Sage: Ties of Tenggara exhibition held at NVAG due to some maintenance work. 

The artwork, titled The Subtitle, was a depiction of The Godfather film, which also had a line of dialogue from the film, “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”.

A day later, the painting was reinstalled. – November 22, 2017.