Find the Gap: borders, escape, and the JB-SG Causeway in the works of Rifqi Amirul

Sharmini Aphrodite

The ​Figures of Longing (2019) appear in waves of flickering blue, a colour that the German writer Johann
Goethe described as “a contradiction between excitement and repose”. These flickering images are
broadcasted through two television screens, placed on their backs on platforms set at an angle above the
ground. Watching them, you understand what Goethe means by contradiction, by the tension that exists
between two points. What you see on the screens is sporadic – cross-sections of luggage, a series of lines,
pictures of white earth. Trapped, vestigial things caught neither here nor there, trembling in some sort of
purgatory. Above each screen lies a sculpture: what looks like the carcass of a great whale, white bones
strewn in blue strips of paper, the movement of the images below it like an unquiet sea. There is also
sound, an endless crunching of static, going on and on until the end of time.

Rifqi Amirul’s work often deals with the in-between of things: states of suspension, transition, liminality.
Rifqi used to be a Causeway kid – one of the thousands of children and teenagers who cross the border
between Johor Bahru and Woodlands for school. Often, they travel on the hallmark yellow Bas Sekolah,
but many also use public transport. It’s a journey that can take anywhere – depending on travel
conditions, where you live in JB and where your school is located in Singapore (Bas Sekolah only serve
those in the Woodlands area) – from one to three hours each way. A significant amount of that time is
spent in-between, antarabangsa – whether you’re caught in an endless queue in immigrations, or stuck in
a traffic jam on the Causeway itself, a thin strip of tarmac and concrete that lies between the Straits of
Johor. Although tourists do use the Causeway to travel between Singapore and Malaysia, the majority of
its users aren’t travelling for pleasure. Most are Malaysians working in Singapore, drawn by the 3:1 ratio
of dollar to ringgit (still 2:1 in the noughties). For some, the journey is weekly, they only return to
Malaysia on the weekend; for others, the grind is daily. That’s a lot of time to spend in a liminal space,
trapped neither here nor there. For hours each day, one is trapped in a no-man’s-land besieged by irate bus
drivers (and their horns!), sweaty commuters, and a view of the Straits that either glitter with sunlight, or
gleam with the city lights at night. It is this tension that Rifqi’s work represents.

In ​No Man’s Land (2017; mixed media on glass), a series of paintings is inspired by Rifqi’s once-daily
cross-country commute. Titled in Malay, these three paintings show scenes of tension set against the
smooth sweep of a black background. In ​Hujan Emas di Negeri Orang​, a reddish-gold barrier encases a
set of figures, green snaking throughout the canvas, with a sliver of darkness between the barrier
signalling the possibility of escape. This piece was inspired by the works of Richard Serra, whose
sculptures evoke, at first, an explicit sense of hostility. Many of Serra’s pieces are rust- or steel-like in
appearance, hulking things that appear as a maze or a series of boundaries, conjuring the possibility of
separation or violence. They look like forts from a distant war. But what is interesting is Serra’s use of
space: as in ​Hujan Emas di Negeri Orang​, his sculptures are arranged in such a way that a viewer might
walk through them, or be able to see a way out, a point of escape. In both Serra and Rifqi’s work, there
exists a pocket of silence, a space to breathe.

In ​Dia-S’porean​, a knife-like wall towers over a figure in the painting’s centre, isolating it with its
vastness, while in the background, a textured horizontal sweep of paint gleams with light like the sea at
night. And in ​Pagar​, the foreground is criss-crossed with the image of a barbed-wire fence, large and
impenetrable, through which you can see a black sea strewn with colour. This calls to mind the litter that
drenches the parts of the Straits closest to land in real life; alternatively, this illustration can be viewed as
the reflected lights of traffic. It is a mirror trick, a dual-image that parallels the situation of the Causeway,
where the two nations meet. Beyond this cluttered foreground, the straight line of the Causeway continues
into the distance, streetlamps hanging over it like gargoyles, watching over everything like the red eye of
the moon above. But there is also the silent respite of a starless sky that allows the viewer to take a breath,
to find a moment to centre themselves amidst the chaos.

In ​Borders and Territories (2018, mixed media), Rifqi uses a series of works to respond to the bleak
architectural language of borders. This architecture is often hostile: sharp, imposing, as if these borders
are designed to keep travellers away. In a conversation where the both of us were talking about our
experiences as Causeway kids, Rifqi mentioned to me that he perceived the facade of the Singapore
Immigrations as a policeman. The roof as a slanted cap, a section that juts out like a head, the blocky
body. There is an element of harsh authority to the architectural language of borders. They are meant to
be utilitarian; they make no concessions for visitors. In many parts of the world, they can be meant to
dissuade not only those who wish to enter the nation they guard, but even the very ​idea ​of entry. In
Borders and Territories,​ Riqfi responds to this hostility with a playful subversion, turning objects and
architectural elements that intimidate into something humorous.
The works in this series straddle mediums: sculptures such as ​Sad Fence show a twisted barricade,
charred at its edges, expressing the consequential violence of one caught in a trap (a wolf gnawing at the
chain around its ankle cannot be anything ​but​). ​Study 1,​ silkscreen and graphite on paper, replete again
with the imagery of fences, has parts cut out of it: creating the idea that the spiritual self is wandering
while the physical self is held hostage. If you are in any Customs hall, waiting in the queue, all you have
to do is look around you to see what Rifqi might have been thinking of during the creation of this work.
Bodies might be anchored in place, but people look around with glazed expressions, using their phones if
they are allowed, or perhaps reading, talking to each other – anything to draw them out of the banal
tension of immigrations.

In ​Sharpest Hump​, this tension is punctured. The work is a single-channel video, displaying a girl kicking
around one of the cement barriers that line the sides of the Causeway, demarcating lanes for
motorcyclists, cars, buses, and pedestrians who cross when the traffic is at its heaviest. This work pays
homage to the ideas of the French philosopher Bruno Latour, who deconstructs the notion of the speed
hump as “morality checker”. In Latour’s writings, he discusses how the purpose of the speed hump has
moved from signalling drivers to slow down for the safety of others, to signalling them to slow down
instead to protect their vehicles from harm. The situation on the Causeway – especially on Friday
evenings, when the swell of people returning to Malaysia is the heaviest – makes both the pedestrian and
the vehiclist reckless, causes both of them to skirt – and defy – the barriers between danger and safety.

In the video, the girl kicks the hump around a basketball court for a while – it is fitted with wheels for
ease of movement. As in ​Sad Fence​, the hump here does not serve its intended purpose; instead of being a
stationary object meant to halt movement, it has been fitted with wheels. Instead of being a blockade, the
hump has become a vehicle; instead of a cause of frustration, it allows for release. The girl in the video
swings herself onto it and rides around the court, letting out a scream that is either torment or exhilaration,
her face too far away from the camera to catch her expression.

Finally, ​Inter-com (2018) stands out amongst Rifqi’s oeuvre as a piece that uses an aural instead of a
visual language. Loudspeakers suspended in a football field “talk” to each other: the sounds they produce
have been recorded in a transitional space, creating a sense of anxiety. Yet in the almost-dark field, lit up
with lonely fluorescence and the faraway lights of housing estates, the set-up also creates a sense of
longing, of yearning. Perhaps it is ​this ​that exists in the heart of a liminal space, and in Rifqi’s work. Not
just borders, but the desire trapped between them. The desire to be somewhere else. To speak beyond
borders, and in so doing, escape them; a desire to not only speak but to be heard. To be acknowledged not
as a passport or a fingerprint, but as a person. One that breathes and exists, with desires too large for any
border – any barrier – to contain.