When Malaysians Sat Down To Doodle What #BangkitMalaysia Looks Like To Them
It is time to stand up for what we believe in.
By Sukhbir Cheema — 24 Sep 2015, 11:19 AM
A group of 29 local artists created artworks consisting of paintings and digital artworks to celebrate and share their feelings about what being Malaysian is all about
The project, dubbed #BangkitMalaysia #StandUpMalaysia, consisted of 32 artworks drawn by the artists from the Doodle Malaysia group on Facebook sharing their inspiring messages of unity and oneness.
Co-organisers of the project, Faizzal Fah'd and Allison Li-Sin Hill revealed to us that the idea came about during a conversation on the recent events taking place in the country.
“What we realised was that, yes, the sense of pride was momentarily dented, but the love is always there."
"It is time to stand up for what we believe in – stand up for our stories, our values, our opinions," Allison said. “So Bangkit Malaysia, or Stand Up Malaysia is simply a platform for our members to express this. What will you stand up for? Tell us in your art. And wow, did they tell us!”
Alex Lim’s artwork presented the universal message of oneness that despite our skin colour, we all bleed red in the end through his well received Happy Boy cartoon
Arif Rafhan Othman's simple black and white ink sketch called Malaysians to quit being keyboard warriors and make their voices truly heard for the country especially in these trying times
Chyuan Lee's thoughtful painting invoked the innocence of the Malaysian people
See more of Chyuan Lee's work here.
While Elly Alias’ piece reminded Malaysians young adults of how life was much simpler back then
Hafiz Asrun on the other hand presented an alternate look at the country's national monument, which consisted of common Malaysians
And since we're still on the topic of the national monument, this is Lydia Rayyan's flower power version
More of Lydia's work here.
Marts Aziz's vector styled sketching of flowers on a Malaysian flag evoked the sense of running through the streets, waving the national flag proudly
Joshua Chung, meanwhile, presented a tongue-in-cheek artwork, where the uniting factor for Malaysians has always been our food (in this case, kuih bangkit)
See more from Joshua Chung here.
And Lisa SL. Foo’s sketch provided voices for non-human Malaysians too (the orang utan, the Sarawak Hornbill, and other Malaysian kuih-muih)!
With the country seemingly being run by mindless zombies, Zam Katang drew a possible scenario should the zombies run over while Malaysians remained asleep
This one was not a sketch, according to Nicholas Quah, but an artwork consisting of words
Ruby Subramaniam's attention grabbing painting is dedicated to all the women in the frontline
And Allison Li-Sin Hill cartoon drove home the message and objective behind the project
The artists from Doodle Malaysia – Do You Doodle? are now in the midst of planning in printing out the artworks into postcards to be handed out to the general public