Ilm E Ghaib

[Prince Aboubakar]

Inan image-dominated world, humans are perpetually engaged in the seen, the visible. What then is the invisible? What is hidden? What is the unseen? When thinking about the unseen within the Southeast Asian paradigm, the concept is oftentimes centred in the supernatural realm: God, deities, angels, djinn (demons), the devil, the paranormal, mythology, mysticism, superstitions, omens, ghosts, ghouls, spirits, amongst others. Ideas about other worlds are ingrained in most Southeast Asian cultures where the frontier between the physical and metaphysical is blurred. Vernacular beliefs, as [End Page 243] well as cultural customs that entwine religious and traditional practices comprising the unseen, inform us of a coexistence in our material plane, even though the immaterial escapes our sight. With these general conceptions, it is easy to relegate certain artistic practices to the 'spiritual' in approach, suggesting religious connotations centring on an artist's identity. While this may be true in some ways, visualisation of the 'spiritual' impedes the process of understanding these artworks as more than a representation of their beliefs.1

The arrival of Islam in the Malay Archipelago is believed to have reached its peak transformation between the 13th and 16th century. Sufism, a mystical strand of the religion, is believed to have propelled Islam into the archipelago, alongside enduring pre-Islamic, Hindu-Buddhist and animist traditions, which eventually shaped some aspects of Malay culture.3 Ghaib derived from the Arabic ghayb, but little is known of when it was absorbed into the Malay language; nonetheless one can assume that the term would have been present [End Page 244] in manuscripts of Islamic narratives containing the 'religious vocabulary' of the Al-ghayb.4 Despite the term's originary relationship to Islam, it has been absorbed in the Malay Archipelago to encompass all immaterial beings that remain invisible to the naked eye. Before expanding on these interpretations, it is essential to understand the term's linguistic meaning in Arabic and its use in Islam:

In Sunni Islam, belief in the unseen is ingrained in the six important tenets of faith that all Muslims must embody.11 The belief in ghaib is intrinsic to engineering a reality that accommodates both irrational and rational understanding of the physical world. Concepts such as "tawhid, the fundamental idea of Oneness in monotheism",12 zahir (exterior), batin (interior truths) from Sufi ideology have been used to articulate Malay-Muslim artists and their practices as externalising their interiority. An exemplary artist who identified as a Sufi is the late Mohammad Din Mohammad.

Born in Malacca in 1955, Din Mohammad was known as an artist, a silat13 practitioner and a traditional healer. An accident in 1980 that left him unable to walk for two years was a significant juncture in his life. The aid of his silat master, whose traditional healing methods included the use of herbs, eventually set Din Mohammad on a path of restoration and propelled his own entry into traditional healing. In 2008, a posthumous exhibition mounted at the NUS Museum in Singapore presented a collection of artworks and materials the artist had collected from "medicinal animal bones and skins, roots and herbs, oils, knives and spears, rare stones, crafted wooden furniture, miniature Qurans and leather puppets".14 Curator Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, drawing on his interactions with D.S. Farrer, an anthropologist specialising in silat, describes how Din's Mohammad's spiritual knowledge of silat made him a "'transducer' of divine power from the sacred to the profane realm", an experience that impacted his art-making process.15 According to the artist's wife Hamidah Jalil, Din Mohammad's approach to art-making required a 'surrender' on his part. "The sacred to the profane realm" is attributed to being instrumented by God throughout the making of a work that he establishes by declaring his niat (intentions), prayers and dhikr. In short, Din Mohammad is the mediator, God is the artist, and the work is a physical manifestation of the ghaib. [End Page 246]

While his paintings were much discussed, it is also essential to see the ghaib manifesting in Din Mohammad's sculptures. The artist's fascination with the Islamic narrative of the Buraq,16 pointed out by Hamidah Jalil, is worth considering. The Buraq, introduced by the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, is a supernatural creature-vehicle that transported the Prophet from Mecca to Jerusalem within an exceptionally short time. Din Mohammad repeatedly metaphorises this vehicle in different renditions to embody the journey of spiritual enlightenment (see Figures 1 and 2). In this sense, the concepts of zahir (exterior) and batin (interior truths) are insufficient as an explanation. The artist's reconciliation with the figurative is much more fluid and should be dissected further with Sufi thought: the physical, impermanent world is real, but the metaphysical, permanent world is the reality.17 What can be seen as an abstract, metaphorical representation of the vehicle, to the Sufi, is rational and possess a "living and dynamic reality".18 The fragmented disunity of the materials that Din Mohammad uses in both assemblages asserts an intention that is nonsensical to the secularly-trained eye. By uniting different fragments of materials like a bicycle or a computer stand, as seen in Singa Kuda (Lion Horse) and Mystical Journey 1, Din Mohammad gives them a new lease of life. This assemblage can be seen as a perfectly logical body according to the standards of the unseen, which one may never be privy to.

Similarly to Din Mohammad, the artist Salleh Japar implements a different type of disassembling as his visual language. Although Salleh stresses that his works dwell on Islamic philosophy,19 it is crucial to understand that his works do not necessarily fall under the category of Islamic art, but rather, within the artist's understanding of his own 'Islamicity'. This issue is a prevalent problem in classifying modern and contemporary Islamic art movements, for example, in Malaysia, where several art historians have pointed out the complexity.20 To quote Malaysian art historian and artist Sulaiman Esa:

Does a depiction of a mosque, the use of jawi (Arabic script for writing Malay) forms in an optical squiggle, or the incorporation of the intricately graceful image of awan larat (a type of woodcarving motif) render a painting necessarily Islamic? What is the definition of Islamic art? What determines its Islamicity? How does it differ from Muslim art, sacred art or religious art?21

Mohammed Din Mohammad, Mystical Journey 1 2001. Deer head and tail of a horse, squatting figurine, keris handle, head figurine of Arjuna on bicycle stand. Dimensions unknown. Image courtesy of Mdm Hamidah Jalil.

One element that repeatedly appears in Salleh's artworks is the symbol of ritual structures with a central point of sacred power, such as mountains and the axis mundi. In Islam, the Kaaba in Mecca is one of such structures. Mountains are familiar iconography in Salleh's works. The artist describes them as "nails of the earth", a popular expression used by Muslims to mirror the Quran's description of mountains as "firm foundations".22 The notion of mountains being a symbol of the universe is a common concept around the world and has extensive iterations in Southeast Asia. As elaborated by Astri Wright, an art historian specialising in Indonesian art, mountains "resonate against millennia-old preoccupations with the soul and with spirit power, informed by indigenous animist, Buddhist and Hindu ideas".23

Salleh's approach of finding commonality in different religious motifs and beliefs is a reflection of his own process of trying to understand his place in the region and in the world. The symbols of axis mundi and tangka in his work may seem puzzling for those unfamiliar with landscapes or divination practices from the Malay world, but by defying the clarity of the image, Salleh projects a counter-aesthetics in his works to deter the exoticised baggage that comes with this symbolism. [End Page 251]

It is easy to confine Din Mohammad's and Salleh's practices within the category of abstract works of art, but a familiar eye can also see reconciliation with the unseen, which is used to map ancestral movement in the region culturally. This is particularly important to note, considering today's diasporic, globalised world. The disjuncture in Din Mohammad's assemblages and Salleh's paintings mirrors a melange rather than an authentic perception of culture. As cultural traditions and practices continue to vanish in favour of a modern, rational worldview, ghaib as the unseen and a sixth sense becomes a type of mapping of the artists' relationships with the local, regional or global spheres.

Another notable element is Din Mohammad's use of figurines, an element of indigenous Javanese iconography, in his sculptures. In Figure 1, a Javanese Singa (lion) sits on the vehicle while a Makara (sea monster) envelops the leg. Figure 2 shows Arjuna, an ascetic hero in the Mahabharata epic, beside the iconic squatting figure28 (an icon not limited to Java but found in many Austronesian cultures).29 Javanese culture is also known to have many conflations of religions and traditional practices. While we are unable to assume connections with Din Mohammad's practice, it is worth noting that Javanese culture has its own similar practice of understanding the unseen: Kebatinan, known also as Kejawen (Javanism) or Kapitayan, which includes beliefs "that concern potency and the imperceptible world".30 These are unique strands of Javanese religion that embody diverse religious beliefs, from folkloric to Hindu-Buddhist and sometimes Islamic. Such were the normalised views before Islam penetrated Javanese identity and became part of nationalist movements in Indonesia.

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