Vols Make International Art Connection
Malaysian artists share their creative community with UT artists during Big Ears Festival.
Within the Big Ears Festival schedule, Pangrok Sulap plans to conduct printing sessions, open to the public, in the South Garden of the Knoxville Museum of Art during performance intermissions in the museum’s Ann and Steve Bailey Great Hall.
Big Ears Festival Printing at Knoxville Museum of Art
3–4:15 p.m. Thursday, March 27
Noon–1:30 pm.; 2:45–4 p.m.; and 4:45–6:30 p.m. Friday–Saturday, March 28–29
Throughout March, prints from Pangrok Sulap will also be presented at the RED Gallery, 130 West Jackson Ave. Regular gallery hours are 1–5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and will expand to 10 a.m.–6 p.m. during the Big Ears Festival.
Artists from the Malaysian art collective Pangrok Sulap will collaborate and share their unique approach to art and community building with UT art students and the people of Knoxville during a visit that is also a part of the Big Ears Festival, March 27–30.
Artists Adi Helmi Bin Jaini and Zayrul Rizo Bin Osman Leong began collaborating with UT students and faculty during the spring break week to plan and create a large-scale, community-printed woodcut. This collaboration, accompanied by live music, is the core of the Pangrok Sulap method. In their home of Sabah, Borneo, they bring together artists, musicians, and social activists to help empower rural communities and marginalized people through art.
Professor Misty Anderson, head of the Department of English, initiated the group’s UT visit and collaborative project after meeting them during an international trip with colleague Anne Harley, a music professor at Scripps College in Los Angeles. Anderson accompanied Harley and a class of students to Borneo as a collaboration through the Consortium for Global Education.
“The chance to spend a day in the Pangrok Sulap studio in Kota Kinabalu in the summer of 2023 was a thrill,” said Anderson. “The wood blocks and the hundreds of prints that line the walls record the histories of rural communities in Borneo and show the impact of environmental degradation and the importance of fighting for clean air and water. What struck me most about the larger narrative prints was the way that they imagine remediation and sustainable futures that support animal, plant, and human life.”
The Pangrok Sulap collective contributes as they create, returning a third of their proceeds to rural communities in need of clean water and electricity, with the other portions going to maintain their studio support group members. The group is named for the energetic, communal spirit of their artistic gatherings. “Pangrok” is the local pronunciation of “punk rock” in Borneo, and a “sulap” is a hut or a resting place often used by farmers there.
The group will connect with UT art students through the Visiting Artist Seminar course taught by Divisional Dean for Arts and Humanities Beauvais Lyons.
“UT has partnered with them based on the reputation of our printmaking program,” said Lyons. “Students will each spend about 90 hours on the project. Before the visit, students have been reading about the group, and issues related to Borneo’s history and environment.”
Visiting-artist collaborations like this engage students in planning and communication in addition to artistic learning.
“They learn an approach and methods from myself and guest artists Adi and Rizo,” said Lyons. “Most importantly, students have a voice in the project, the subject of our print, and the design. Like many of the collaborative projects we have completed previously with guest artists, the process is always exciting and involves both risk-taking and shared visioning.”
The active outreach with these international artists is one way that Vols share in a respectful exchange of ideas that strengthens UT’s civic connections around the world.
By Randall Brown