ANIDA YOEU ALI Portrait of Anida Yoeu Ali. Photo by Masahiro Sugano. Courtesy the artist. , “The Buddhist Bug,” 2009– , live performance at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Museum Asian Art Fukuoka at performance , “The 2009– , live Buddhist Bug,” on September 27, 2014. Photo by Studio Revolt, Chicago/Phnom Penh. Courtesy the artist. the artist. Courtesy Penh. Chicago/Phnom Revolt, Studio 2014. by Photo 27, on September ANIDA YOEU ALI YOEU ANIDA

Artist Provocateur BY ANNIE JAEL KWAN

74 artasiapacific | SEP/OCT 2015 | ISSUE 95 Profiles

April in Paris—the air is still crisp in the late an alluring and paradoxical persona. They of the Sultan Mosque, swaying gently. Slowly, afternoon. People mill around the Trocadéro bear many of the driving characteristics of an audience grew around the Bug, composed with its view of the Eiffel Tower. A woman, Ali’s work, and continue lines of inquiry and mostly of tourists and curious locals. As the wearing a floor-length red chador covered activism regarding critical dialogue with day’s Maghrib prayer (a daily ritual of Islam) with sequins, shimmers with each step as race, conflict and the global crisis of religion. faded and the congregation dispersed, various she moves near an assembly protesting Her better known work is “The Buddhist members of the Muslim community stopped Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen. At first the Bug” series (2009– ), which has manifested to stare. An older man in a songkok and sarong demonstrators do not notice her, but as she in different forms—video, photography, approached the Bug, muttering agitatedly passes them, a few of them suddenly break installation and live performance—all of before escalating to shout “Haram!” at the away to approach her. They talk excitedly at which are stand-alone works and form, as a Bug. “This is not Muslim,” he decried angrily, her and take photos. She bows deeply. whole, an artistic investigation. At its center, confronting the double mimicry of the Bug’s The next day, the red-chador woman sits the Buddhist Bug is a tubular structure hijab-like facade and its bulging form against in the elegant hall of the Palais de Tokyo, with regularly interspersed circular hoops, the mosque’s gleaming golden bulb. with a basketful of baguettes. Holding a not unlike a Chinese paper lantern. Reams In a way he is right, the Bug is not piece aloft, she announces the imminent of orange fabric form the skin of the Bug. Muslim—or, not just Muslim. It is also an beheading of the bread in one hour. She When inhabiting the Bug, which is a sort allusion to the saffron hue of Buddhist states her demand for its ransom, and of alter ego that Ali refers to as “s/he,” the robes. For even as Ali self-identifies as repeats this ritual every hour. The demands artist wears an orange top with a hood pulled Khmer-Muslim, she has long professed a range from the immediately impossible forward, framing her face to resemble the fascination with Buddhism, having spent her (introduce Halal meat in schools) to the top of a hijab. The Bug’s “legs,” performed early years in Cambodia where 96 percent amusing (“find me 99 virgins”). After by an assistant, whose upper half is hidden of the population are Buddhists. It is the the initial stunned silence, the audience within the voluminous coils, takes position Bug’s ability to manifest such dichotomous becomes invested, and groups of people plot in various whimsical poses. cultural inclinations that triggers similar how to rescue the baguettes and negotiate Though the Bug was first realized during anxieties of Muslim identity in this with the artist. This is a new 12-hour her graduate studies, Ali continued to aggravated viewer who exists within the participatory performance, Beheadings develop the work when she moved from Chinese-dominated Singaporean landscape. (2015), by multidisciplinary artist, educator the US to Phnom Penh, in 2011, as part of Here we observe how Ali’s Bug and political provocateur, Anida Yoeu Ali. her Fulbright scholarship. The Bug grew performance succeeds on several levels. When asked about her decision to bring both conceptually and materially in her First, it activates the agency of the artist these performances to Paris, which saw homeland, exploring the urban landscape by manifesting vividly a deeply personal the massacre by religious extremists at the of Phnom Penh, coiling up staircases, riding and creative inquiry that extends from the offices of satirical publicationCharlie Hebdo cyclos (three-wheeled vehicles), visiting US to the rapidly changing socioeconomic earlier this year, Ali replies, “I conceived campuses, embarking on a river journey and landscape of post-conflict Cambodia. Second, The Red Chador and Beheadings before expanding to 40 meters as an installation in the work’s strong imagery encapsulates its the killings . . . I felt even more of an Siem Reap as well as in Phnom Penh. These performative energy in cinematically framed urgency to have the work witnessed and excursions of mapping across Cambodian photographic and video content, forcing engaged by people in the French public landscapes and within its communities viewers to calibrate—and recalibrate—its sphere . . . The whole point of the work is extend the urge and the desire of the visual narrative, creating a shift in the for the Muslim woman and body to be seen artist—similar to others of the diasporic gaze. Finally, as a public installation that and acknowledged.” generation of conflict and cultural rupture— is inhabited by live performance, the Bug Ali is a first generation Cambodian- to rediscover and reconnect with her past. precipitates an irresolvable cipher and a born woman of mixed Khmer and Cham- While the work attracts attention with its catalyst that provokes visceral response and Muslim heritage, who left with her family picturesque light-heartedness, on closer critical engagement. for the United States as refugees in 1979. inspection, the Bug is understood as an Back in Phnom Penh, Ali and her husband In person, Ali is slight, warm and speaks “other,” whose very presence confronts the have recently finished shooting the final Bug perfect American English. She engages in common with the unfamiliar, and embodies series, exploring the city’s seedier neon-lit rigorous discussions regarding the Khmer within its isolated being the paradoxical areas. The Bug, ever the intrepid explorer, diaspora experience and political activism, fantasies of anxiety and fascination. Ali is seen coiled around a tuk-tuk puttering peppered with humorous street-inflected describes it thus: “For me, the Bug is created around town. Not long after, Ali announces exclamations. At the end of her Parisian from a sense of play and curiosity. S/he she will be returning to the US to assume promenade as the red-chador lady, Ali whips is a displaced creature destined to travel a new fellowship at Trinity College in off the garment to reveal a close-fitting and wander amidst the ‘in-between.’ This Connecticut. But Ali is adamant that she is T-shirt with bold letters spelling out “Studio space, which exists between who s/he is and not leaving Cambodia. “I have always known Revolt,” a production company she runs with where s/he is, is in fact a powerful place for that my destiny is to travel back and forth her filmmaker husband, Masahiro Sugano, encounter, habitation and reinvention.” and truly inhabit that space in-between and and whose latest projects feature American- Earlier this year, the Bug was performed at both ends,” she says. “I don’t think it’s fair exile Khmer hiphop troubadour, Kosal Khiev. at the Malay Heritage Centre in the historic for me to try and choose between the US and The performances, The Red Chador and Kampong Glam district of Singapore. At Cambodia when my life, culture and work Beheadings, present the red-chador lady as sunset, the Bug coiled around itself in front are both here and there.”

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