GEORGE TOWN: It was a big sigh of relief for a majority of media practitioners in Penang when they got their Covid-19 vaccination.
A total of 117 media practitioners out of 192 who registered got their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech jabs yesterday.
“We consider them as frontliners too and we want to get them vaccinated as soon as possible so that they can work confidently in delivering accurate information to the people,” said Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Zahidi Zainul Abidin.
Zahidi had dropped by the Bandar Baru Ayer Itam government health clinic where the media group waited for their turn to get the jab.
KUALA LUMPUR (April 4): One hundred artworks by 80 artists commemorating Lim Kit Siang’s 80th birthday are on show at Theatre Impian, named in honour of his Malaysian Dream. The permanent display is curated by Kenny Teng and Wendy Chang of G13 Gallery.
The pieces by young and established artists capture the politician’s struggles, sacrifices and achievements over the last 55 years. They make up the visual biography of a man who has fought long, hard and tirelessly to make Malaysia better for Malaysians.
The aim is for people, especially the younger generation, to get to know Kit Siang better and “be inspired to do more and eventually take over from him”, says Damansara MP Tony Pua, who drew up the storyboard for the exhibition.
You may think that Datuk Sharifah Fatimah Syed Zubir Barakbah’s latest visual chronicle,
Tales Of Solace, is a reference to the pandemic and year-long confinement that we were all subjected to. But you’d be wrong.
“Solitude and solace don’t refer to the pandemic, ” says Sharifah Fatimah candidly over the phone.
“After all, most artists prefer to work in solitary confinement and I have always worked alone. But the pandemic has disrupted plans for overseas travel with my family and I miss that. So, I create a lot of recollection works of the places that I have been to, such as landscapes and the texture of the earth, and caves especially, ” she adds.
When veteran artist Prof Datuk Tajuddin Ismail tells you that “art is a very lonely profession”, you got to take him at his word.
The Negri Sembilan-born abstract painter has been an active practitioner for nearly 50 years, with more than 20 solo exhibitions and more than 200 groups shows locally and abroad.
In a recent online video series
In Conversation, Tajuddin, 72, adds that for an artist “it is only you and the canvas. There is no audience, really.”
The movement control order (MCO) might have disrupted Tajuddin s latest exhibition
Mosaicat Petaling Jaya-based art gallery G13 Gallery, but art enthusiasts can stay home and still enjoy the gallery’s digital outreach for this artist s show.
G13 Gallery s current exhibition,
Mosaic, a solo by renowned abstract artist Tajuddin Ismail, had just opened on Monday (Jan 11), the same day the new measures to curb the Covid-19 outbreak were announced.
With the gallery in Petaling Jaya having to close, this exhibition will now be converted into an online show.
In fact, the gallery plans to relook at all the exhibitions they had planned for the coming months and spend the MCO working on converting them to an online version.
“As of now, we have already started our preparations for the transition into online viewing. This includes footage of artist interviews, photoshoot of installation views as well as videography of the artworks to be exhibited. We plan to showcase the artworks online in order for fellow art lovers to be able to view and enjoy the pieces without having to physically go to our venue, ” says G13 Gallery founder Kenny Teng.