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For over the past seven years eminent Malaysian watercolorist Chang Fee Ming has been following The Mekong’s trail. Had he kept note of the time and distances traveled during his numerous visits to various sections of the river’s course, it would indeed be an enviable record coveted by great travelers and explorers from another time. Though such is not revealed in his art, what becomes evident is that of an artist’s intimate exploration along this great river’s course and the lands through which it flows. It is a personal travelogue, inspired by the Mekong’s dramatic characteristics and its peoples, capturing in masterful details their mores, their costumes, their means and ways of life. “To travel and see and paint is for me a way of learning, part of my life philosophy”; a value which shares the romance and nostalgia of a time when artists dreamt of discovering new lands and cultures and to paint of them. Fee Ming’s depiction of the Mekong world brings us a bit of its past, present and uncertain future. With its shadowed history, the Mekong River has slipped from the imagination and attention of many in Southeast Asia. Isolated from modern progress, many of its people have maintained a traditional way of life that has scarcely altered over two centuries. With today’s forces of development, progress and tourism, the survival of the peoples traditional customs are under threat; many grappling with the meaning of a modern identity and finding new strategies of coping with change. Not only is The Mekong series an invaluable document of communities in transition, it also a fine display of Fee Ming’s unparalleled handling and a continual exploration of the possibilities of the watercolour. Comprising approximately forty main works made in the past three years, and one hundred small works and sketches culled from numerous sketchbooks filled during the artist’s frequent travel to the Mekong, each image captures the light and temperature, the drama and details of life in this secluded region. A consummate narrator, he conveys with a sensitive tone, the poignancy and painful ironies of an older yet vulnerable Southeast Asian world, the resilience of the human spirit and of cultural tradition in the face of change. Chang Fee Ming: Mekong hopes to bring a different and lively picture of a changing region -the historical glory, the powerful cultural range and contemporary challenges of a region in Southeast Asia under documented and often misunderstood. The exhibition will be open at Galeri Petronas in Kuala Lumpur in February 2004, and is planned to tour to Singapore, Chiangmai and Jakarta through 2004.
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