Second-Hand Certainties — The Process

Second-Hand Certainties did not begin with a fixed plan or a clearly defined outcome. It emerged through a series of conversations, constraints, and actions unfolding across distance, shaped as much by chance as by intention. At the time, I was in Copenhagen, while Nizam Rahmat, the gallery owner, and Abg Cik, the silkscreen technician, were in Malaysia. From the beginning, the process moved in parallel directions, without attempting to resolve itself too early.

My exchanges with Nizam focused on building the conceptual terrain of the work. We spoke about public language that presents itself as stable, neutral, or inevitable—slogans, promotional phrases, inherited assurances that continue to circulate long after their original conditions have shifted. What interested us was not whether these statements were true or false, but why they continue to sound convincing. Certainty appeared less as knowledge and more as habit: something repeated often enough to feel reliable.

At the same time, many ideas were proposed only to be deliberately abandoned. Budget, time, scale, transport, and feasibility continuously shaped what could remain. This was not experienced as failure or compromise, but as subtraction. Concepts were reduced, stripped back, or left behind simply because they demanded more than the situation allowed. What stayed was what could survive constraint. Certainty, in this sense, emerged through limitation rather than abundance.

In contrast, the exchanges with Abg Cik were immediate and decisive. His approach was shaped by experience rather than speculation. Instructions were short and practical: one frame, two tones, keep it simple, halftone is enough. These were not aesthetic positions but working decisions—made to allow the process to function. Where the conceptual dialogue resisted closure, the technical process required it.

The silkscreen work took place at Kapallorek Art Space in Ipoh in November 2025, exactly one year after my solo exhibition there in November–December 2024. I returned specifically to carry out the printing. The gallery once again became a working site, though under different conditions—no longer an exhibition space, but a temporary studio shaped by necessity.

The initial plan was to print on gauze. To protect the tables from paint, we laid out used textiles. These cloths were not neutral. Abg Cik had previously used them to cover the floor while repainting the walls at Kapallorek. They already carried stains, dust, and marks from earlier labour. They were there purely as protection—background material, disposable, easily ignored.

As the printing progressed, something unplanned happened. The work did not unfold convincingly on the gauze. Instead, it was the used textiles—meant only to support the process—that began to absorb paint, pressure, and residue in a way that felt more grounded and complete. This was not anticipated, discussed, or decided in advance. There was no moment of conceptual realisation. It became clear only afterward that the work had already taken place there.

What was meant to support the work became the work itself.

Call it accident, coincidence, chance, or misalignment. The used textiles were never intended to be artworks. They were not selected, prepared, or elevated. They simply remained, carrying the marks of action, repetition, and time. The gauze receded. The background asserted itself.

The printing process remained direct and uncorrected. Acrylic paint was pushed through the screen, allowing uneven absorption, bleeding, and breakdown to remain visible. Halftone imagery softened further on the textured surface. Misalignments and inconsistencies were left intact. The used textiles resisted clarity while holding the confidence of the printed statements without fully stabilising them.

As the works neared completion, further reduction took place. Decisions narrowed rather than expanded: one frame instead of two, one work instead of multiples, two tones instead of many. Certainty arrived through brief confirmations rather than conviction—ok, betul, confirmed. Agreement replaced authority.

Once completed, the works travelled with me as part of an international residency programme co-organised by Jambatan. They moved together with other participants, passing through different contexts rather than settling immediately into a single destination. The route was practical—Ipoh, Langkawi, and eventually Kuala Lumpur—reinforcing the work’s reliance on circulation rather than fixity.

During the residency, I met Grace, an artist from San Francisco, and showed them the work. Rather than responding conceptually, they responded through experience—referring to a way they had seen similar works installed before. Their suggestion was simple and practical, grounded in memory rather than theory. I accepted it without much resistance. At that point, the decision remained provisional, folded into the ongoing movement of the work.

After the residency had concluded, Grace and I went together to the gallery to meet Nizam. I handed him the work directly and explained how it should be framed, following the approach that had emerged through that earlier encounter. The framing was not presented as a definitive solution, but as the most workable resolution the process had arrived at.

The work did not become clearer through framing. It became usable.

Although the title Second-Hand Certainties suggests confidence, the process that produced the work was marked by uncertainty at every stage. Decisions were provisional, ideas were abandoned, materials shifted roles, and outcomes emerged without being planned. The certainty in the title does not describe how the work was made, but how meaning often appears afterward—assembled retrospectively, borrowed from context, repeated until it feels stable. In this sense, certainty is not the starting point but the residue. It arrives late, second-hand, imposed on a process that never truly possessed it.

This tension extended beyond the making of the work and into its presentation. At one point, there was a clear intention communicated that the exhibition would open while I was still in Kuala Lumpur. I extended my stay in order to be present. The opening, however, did not happen within that window. By the time the exhibition eventually opened, I had already returned to Copenhagen. The certainty of the promise dissolved into a familiar condition: plans adjusted, timelines shifted, presence became absence.

Second-Hand Certainties is inseparable from this accumulation of deferrals. It is shaped by distance and return, by conversation and labour, by ideas proposed and abandoned, by materials reused without intention, and by decisions made through encounter rather than control. Certainty appears here not as truth, but as something assembled after the fact—second-hand—through repetition, agreement, and survival within limits.

The work does not attempt to resolve this contradiction.
It allows uncertainty to remain visible, unresolved, and intact.