Dusun Karaoke Mat: Ahaid zou noh doiti (I've been here a long time)

With weavers: Lili Naming, Siat Yanau and Shahrizan Bin Juin

In this ‘karaoke mat’, Yee I-Lann compiles lyrics from iconic and beloved songs in the language of the Dusun people of the Malaysian state of Sabah in Northern Borneo. Produced in collaboration with Kadazan-Dusun women from around Keningau, in the state’s mountainous interior, it reflects the starkness of Dusun tikar, or woven mat designs.

Tikar are conventionally created for drying food, providing comfortable sleeping space and wrapping the bodies of the deceased. They also bear great commemorative and sentimental value. For Yee, the mats denote spaces of communal significance, preserving customary rhythms and behavioural grammar, while performing an architectural role in daily life, demarcating and democratising space.

As a means of connecting customary and contemporary expressions, Yee’s tikar are developed so their surfaces correspond to pixels on a computer monitor. The artist composes her designs digitally and transfers them to a tarpaulin that acts as a template. The letters are woven into the mat using strands of bamboo blackened with natural dyes.

This work features fragments from folk songs that are a typical feature of communal socialisation and celebration, and often sung as an act of resistance against assimilation into a homogenous Malaysian identity. For those familiar with them, the words are intended to trigger memories of the songs, creating an internal soundtrack reflective of sounds found across Sabah, where karaoke is widely popular. When suspended, the text can be seen in reverse on the rear of the mat, its ghostly bamboo tone deliberately evoking the precarious status of Dusun language and customs.