The title of this article may remind you of the documentary of the same name about street art. The movie, featuring Shepard Fairey (Obey artist) explores the concept of street artists using art as a political tool. The documentary takes place in Burma, where a group of students is doing street art on the Burmese border. It explores the intersection between Democracy, Buddhism, and Art. But I am not here to make a film review!
What we would like to talk about here is how art has always been used for political, social, and ecological commitments. It is in this line that Sambal&Cheese uses art to fight for causes that are dear to them.
Art and engagement
Engagement is an act or attitude, a voluntary, free stand for certain causes (social, political, environmental). Artists often use their art to express their support for a cause. Or, sometimes, on the contrary, to underline the drifts of the contemporary world. They assert their opinion with the duty to make their art a space of interpellation of the public to defend or denounce a cause. Musicians, film-makers, writers, visual artists, the question of the political scope of the artwork has been endless since the Sixties. In France, Jean-Paul Sartre introduced the notion of the engaged intellectual.
Picasso in Guernica denounces the cruelty of the Franco regime during the Spanish War. The work presented at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris seeks to mobilize public attention on the horrific consequences of the Spanish Civil War.
The contemporary era thanks to in situ art (street art, land art, etc.) allows to reintroduce of art in the public space. For example, Banksy represents, in the whole world, gigantic murals portraying homeless people. He aims to sensitize the social misery, the people dying of cold in winter for lack of housing.
The environmental cause
Other artists adhere to the environmental cause so dear to Sambal&Cheese. This is the case of the Pakistani artist Khalil Chishtee who collects waste paper and plastic bags found on the seashore and in the ocean. From this waste, he creates life-size sculptures. He denounces the impact of the overuse of plastic on our lives. In this way, he fights for ecological protection. Biboy Royong is an even more provocative Filipino artist. He wants to disturb and engage the public. With his work The Cry of the Dead Whale, he fights for various environmental causes by highlighting the cruelty and human stupidity of which wildlife is a victim. To learn more about this creation representing a plastic-filled and bloody whale, watch the video about Greenpeace and Biboy Royong.
Sambal&Cheese and its environmental commitment
Close to this movement, we care about heritage and environmental protection, which we describe in the article on Sambal&Cheese values.
This all starts with the choice of materials, recovered and recycled from abandoned houses or the seaside. If our artworks do not properly denounce anything, they advocate a different way of consuming, such as recycling, upcycling and second-hand.
We are also involved with various organizations in Melaka fighting for the protection of the oceans but also the coastline. We have recently participated in the Sungai Project which organizes beach cleanups. Our team goes to the seaside to collect trashes on the beach and in the sea (nets, fishing gear, bottles, shoes, …). From the collected waste, artists and collectives, including Sambal&Cheese will create artworks with the aim of speaking out, denouncing, and raising awareness of the general public.
Sambal&Cheese against land reclaimation
Recently, Sambal&Cheese (Farris) gets involved in the fight against reclaimed land which is a real scourge in Melaka. The project aims at landscaping the waterfront, where land is reclaimed from the sea, with benches made from pallets and painted by local artists. The project follows a petition. Many other artists and citizens join the project as Gafa (artist), Maria (Sungai Project), CzChooi (artist), Roger (artist), and RJ and family (project’s leader).
Melaka, residents saddened to see their city sold off to big developers, reacted really well to the project. Journalist Nicholas Chung reports on the project in his article published in Free Malaysia Today on the 23th of June.