Living and working as an artist in the most expensive city in the world[4] is challenging, and more so when you are not a citizen by legal definition - not even when you have spent practically your entire life here. Ahmad Abu Bakar holds ‘permanent-resident’ status in Singapore and was born in 1963 in Melaka, Peninsular Malaysia, barely two years before Singapore achieved independence from Malaysia. Ahmad grew up in Singapore when he was a baby, went to primary and secondary schools here, and received his art education at LASALLE College of the Arts in its nascent years. This was a time when its founder, Brother Joseph McNally, was still active and personally overseeing the developments of the college.

Unlike other cosmopolitan cities such as New York, Paris, Berlin and London, state support and public acceptance for foreign artists based in Singapore has been somewhat selective. Here, although largely bolstered in various professional fields by contributions of expatriates or what is known in local lingua as ‘foreign talents’, both quantitative and qualitative support for the arts by non-citizen artists appears either a tad inconsequential or possibly too challenging to measure, justify and recognize. Perhaps, and unless, the foreign artist enters the local fray by bringing with them an outstanding brand capital (read Murakami, BANKSY, Hirst or KAWS), and despite the 'woke-ness' of this millennium, technicalities of citizenship place the Singapore-based-foreign-artist behind the local in the order of priorities. This is, perhaps, out of a fear of being rebuked by citizens, as most art activities in the city-state are intertwined with public funds.

Given these positions, Ahmad intuitively finds himself navigating ideas of land and identity. In TANAH LANGIT BUMI, his most recent solo exhibition at Chan + Hori Contemporary, Ahmad Abu Bakar unlocks pockets of space for contemplative dialogues by activating intrinsic and mnemonic vocabulary of symbols. Presented in three main groupings, identified by the bright green TANAH (land), white LANGIT (sky) and bright orange BUMI (earth), his ceramic sculptures evoke emblematic yet minimalistic contours of megaliths, urns, headstones, architectural columns and other traditional crocks. This reference to iconic forms is inspired by ‘truths’ earned by the artist through life experience and profound understanding of journeys and distinctive encounters. Ideas and emotions are condensed here as shapes and colours that are almost puritan in nature. Their spirit is reminiscent of works by artists from a movement coined Orphism by French critic and poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Partly inspired by the form and colours of works by artists such as Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp and the cubists; Orphism also touched upon Wassily Kandinsky’s thoughts and connections in music and art through his writing Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912). Orphism also finds connections with the lore of Orpheus, patron deity of the Orphic religious movement in ancient Greece and ‘superhuman’ lyre player who was said to have visited the underworld in a failed attempt to bring Eurydice, his deceased wife, back to earth.