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Community
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Stories of Vendors Regina
Ibrahim – a consuming passion
More generally, the term Expressionist refers to art that expresses intense emotion. It also often implies emotional angst. Regina
Ibrahim has been described as a visual artist working in the figurative
expressionist mode. I have little understanding of these words but what
I do see in her work is deep emotion and symbolism reflecting the trials
and tribulation in her life and in her struggle to live a transgendered
reality. And is she angry with what life has dealt her? "I have always been a woman”, she answers my nosey question, “but out of social requirement lived as a man for a long while. It felt uncomfortable. I am also often sad", is her resigned answer.
"It was when I was filling in the forms for Bantuan Buku that I realized how much my father earned. Just RM300 in government service."; She said. “My mother was a hard working woman and she managed with just that wage to feed and clothe her children.” This lead to an immense respect for her mother who was illiterate but was still able to deal with all the hard knocks that life gave her. I believe it was also the beginning of her morose and brooding thoughts on the plight of women. "Women live behind a veil. We have no choice. We just accept it." She tells me as she sits softly smoking a cigarette, with a cup of 3–in-1 Nescafe in front of her, quietly forcing me to confront my own reality as a woman, something I had always taken so much for granted.
She has eight sisters, and their life together in the Kampung, with tapioca plants around the house and whatever food could be planted on the plot of land or fished in the nearby Sawah Padi, have become the source of inspiration for her series named “Kampung Life";. "We
used to sneak out to the sawah to catch ikan puyu." She is nostalgic
as she recalls that originally, life was so hard and all she wanted
to do was to get away from Bukit Mertajam as fast as she could. It would be very hard to guess that Regina’s original diploma was in Business Administration. She received a government scholarship and decided that "I shall try to be like other people".
Then life became difficult. She had to support her sisters, “My family believed that we had to help each other”. Regina quit her job in Malaysia and headed for Brunei where salaries were better. When all the women in her family finally got jobs and were settled, Regina stopped teaching completely and found the courage to live as a woman. “You have to be comfortable with what you are”, she reflects contemplatively, ‘I have a very supportive family, in a subtle manner, as long as I do good”. She is a primitive artist with no formal training whatsoever. Although she wanted to paint quite badly early in life, it was a hobby she could not afford to indulge in. Regina started seriously painting while she was in Brunei. “I started painting in water color and sold it to foreigners there. If I could sell 10, I considered it serious painting.”
She feels that, when painting, one has to be totally honest, something she finds difficult and painful to do in a society where people judge one on every single aspect of one’s life. “I am surrounded by women and I am fascinated by women. What they have to deal with in their daily life, from my mother to my sisters and neighbors having to deal with men, with homes……” She is thoughtful as she walks through women’s lives and lives the life of a woman. “And when I had to deal with men myself – there are unspoken things between men and women, sometimes impossible to understand or put into words”. “Some of my paintings depict some struggle of the woman trying to get away from the misery of life.” She is constantly contemplative of women’s lives and their struggles, constantly referring to a heart full of sadness and anger. “I have met too many women who have been disappointed in life and love”. Regina relates to the lethargy, hopes and needs of the women she knows, exposing a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness through a medium that is so rich in its colors and this, to me, this beautiful use of color illustrates that there is hope in every one’s lives. Perhaps the best way to describe that inner space from which her paintings emanate, is to describe, in her own heart wrenching words, the four pieces named “Unwinding”.
Unwinding -- “Green is for jealousy, which we all have at least a little of. Throw away our jealousy. Blue is for sadness. Balance our sadness. Red is for anger. Sit on it and control it or we cannot go on.”
Regina has had two solo exhibitions, one at CHING Lotus Humanist Space in 2003 and the second in Gallery Fuan in 2006. She works mainly with acrylic on canvas. Besides being an artist, she is also a singer and entertainer and has been a supporting and guiding light to the younger members of her community. Her work will be featured in the August Little Penang Street Market. __________________________________ Written
and photographed by Ambiga Devy
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The
Expressionist does not look, he sees – Kasimir Edschmid,
German writer.
Regina
sees deeply into her reality. She has not just looked. Instead,
knowing she was a woman in a man’s body, she made hard decisions
to live a responsible life, true to her family, giving of herself, for
as long as it took them to stabilize their own lives. Only then did
she give in to her need to be herself – a woman. This depth stares
you in the face when you confront her art.
Forty
two year old Regina was born and bred in Bukit Mertajam to parents who
worked hard to ensure that their eleven children got good beginnings
in life.
There
is cynicism in her eyes as she speaks of men, and women, and their expectations
of each other, much of it surely coming from her experiences as a transgender.
Unfortunately,
she graduated right into an economic crisis and could not find a job,
prompting her to further her studies and become a teacher, a profession
she enjoyed.
Full
of symbolism and vigor, strong colors boldly flash from her canvases,
depicting her life in the Kampung and her reminiscences on women. She
transfers her emotions with absolute sincerity into her works. Her painting
showing two women on either side on a cage with two birds, in her own
words, suggests women live imprisoned lives.
Regina
may presently be described as an Expressionist but it is her intricate
introspective impressions of the women that surround her and the woman
within her that makes her art such compelling viewing.