Fullness Over Flatness: Re-tangling Ethnicity and Religion in Yeoh Jin Leng's Baptism of Fire (2003)

Abstract: In the early 2000s Malaysian artist Yeoh Jin Leng, who has otherwise been known for his modernist oeuvre, namely his abstract expressionist paintings, started making figurative works that were inspired by Hindu mythologies. Overshadowed by the works of younger artists who engaged explicitly in sociopolitical issues using alternative media, it would seem that interest in his work waned despite his high productive output in the early 2000s. This article offers a much needed update on scholarship of his work: it will consider the figural and religious 'turn' of his works, in particular his series of paintings inspired by the Ramayana epic, titled Baptism of Fire (2003). I argue that this body of work foregrounded a Southeast Asian version of the original Indian epic and the perspectives of 'minor' characters to reconfigure the moral orientations of the epic and to highlight the enduring influence of Hinduism on contemporary Malay(sian) society. This was all the more important given the alarming spread of cultural and religious dogmatism in the political landscape that sought to subdue and erase the plurality and diversity of Malay cultural traditions at the turn of the century. The Ramayana epic thus served as an important tool for Yeoh to navigate and reconcile the perceived and constructed differences between the Malay-Muslim self and the ethnic and religious 'other', thereby reminding us of the syncretic nature of Malayness by way of its Hindu-Buddhist foundations.