Depicting The Struggle of an Artist Through Maw Murasedi's Painting.
- Fikriyah Harun
- May 5, 2019
- 3 min read
Maw is an Art Major Graduates from our local university, Universiti Brunei Darussalam and currently a part-time Art Tutor at Jo Art Gallery. He has contributed his artwork to the seventh installation of the EMERGE Project by being the voice of youth and artist in Brunei. He has joined several local exhibitions since the year 2011 and was given the opportunity to present his work into His Majesty, Sultan of Brunei Darussalam back in 2013. That work of his has been exhibited in the palace which made it his biggest achievement for being a local artist. He mostly paints individuals or people rather than landscape. Aside from that, he is mostly inspired by his father when he was 5 years old looking at his old man finishing his artwork but only started to actively practices Art in 2011 while studying at Pusat Tingkatan Enam Meragang.
“Somebody said us artists have trouble with success because art is derived from the struggle. I disagree with that because truly doing your art is a success whether you make money from it or not”, quoted from Joe Murray. Being an artist can be a struggle especially due to the label that is glued to the artist. From this, Maw has enabled to show to the public the meaning of his artwork ‘Incomplete’ by showing the struggle that artists or painters go through in the Industry.
According to Maw, the stigma of art and artist are that ‘Art is the easiest major. Artist is not a real job.’ when in retrospect, art has been part of human life for centuries and the world has evolved through the years making impossible things to be possible to do. “Art is always considered as a non-academically subject. Based on my experience, I was criticized that I was very lucky to be able to pursue my study to University because Art is not that hard to study and score well in examinations” says Maw when being asked about his past experience that contributes to his artwork. This kind of stereotype could easily affect the ones who wanted to make their passion into a career, it could demotivate artists to continue what they like to do due to the lack of acknowledgment people gives towards creativity.
His painting represents the situation where the artist lost his motivation and has been struggling to finish his painting. The artist just barely started paint and left it incomplete. The stereotyping of Art with the saying of ''art is easy" is actually contradicting with the fact that art piece is not easy to be produced. Good quality artwork takes time and a set of skills and knowledge to be produced and by putting labels, it could damage the artist’s motivation.
By joining this Emerge 7 - Stereotype exhibition, he is aiming to gather more experience and expose himself into the local creative industry. Also, through art, he wants to share messages to audiences and also other fellow artists. He also advises those who are pursuing art to not be afraid of experiencing techniques and different kind of art and have fun doing what you’re passionate about.
EMERGE 7: STEREOTYPE exhibition is currently on-going until the 5th of May at Creative Space Art Gallery. It featured 13 local emerging artists with 19 artworks that covers issues such as family, mental illness, body image and gender labels.
The EMERGE project is an initiative by Creative Space that is aimed to aspire the local young and emerging artists to further develop their talents where the gallery provides consistent and quality exhibitions to the public in order to make the local artworks relevant and competitive internationally. Which is by providing both physical and online platforms for artists to showcase their artworks.
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