Apa Khabair? — Peranakan Museum in the Making at Asian Civilisations Museum + Interview with Senior Curator, Noorashikin Zulkifli
Apa Khabair?
Peranakan Museum in the Making
February 25, 2022 — May 29, 2022
Apa Khabair? – Peranakan Museum in the Making is a pop-up exhibition showcasing key milestones from the Peranakan Museum’s past while presenting the Peranakan way of life and culture, from Singapore and the region.
The exhibition title is borrowed from the familiar Baba Malay greeting “Apa Khabair?”, meaning “What news is there?”, and heralds the reopening of the Peranakan Museum in the first half of 2023.
Asian Civilisations Museum & Peranakan Museum
Noorashikin Zulkifli
Senior Curator of Islamic Art
Noorashikin binte Zulkifli joined the Asian Civilisations Museum in 2015 as curator of Islamic art. She was lead curator for the revamp of the Islamic Art Gallery (2018) and curated the exhibition ‘Ilm: Science and Imagination in the Islamic World (2016). She was formerly a curator at the Malay Heritage Centre in Kampong Gelam, Singapore’s historic Muslim quarter. She worked on the revamp of its permanent galleries and curated several exhibitions, including Yang Menulis – They Who Write (2012) and Budi Daya (2015). Her meandering journey includes curatorial and programming positions at National University of Singapore Museum and Singapore Art Museum. She holds a Masters in Interactive Media and Critical Theory from Goldsmiths College (UK). Noora’s current research interests revolve around Islamic Southeast Asia, manuscripts, and the arts of the book.
Your present 'Apa Khabair?' exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum focuses on a selection of representative works from the Peranakan Museum collections. Were there particular criteria or thematic threads that guided your selection process?
Apa Khabair? - Peranakan Museum in the Making is a pop-up exhibition presented in three sections to explore the Peranakan Museum’s collaborations with its communities, walk down memory lane with the historical timeline of the museum and its building history, and encounter a selection of finely crafted objects depicting Peranakan ways of life.
We hope to whet the public’s appetite and build anticipation toward the return of a museum dedicated to the rich and vibrant Peranakan communities of Singapore and the region. The display serves as a teaser of what the public can expect when the Peranakan Museum reopens next year, although it is not representative of the full curatorial framework and exhibition themes owing to the constraints of the current exhibition space.
Various considerations are involved, but our principal objective for this pop-up exhibition is to highlight the diversity of Peranakan communities in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and this is what drives how we put together objects and other content. A major practical factor and constraint is the gallery in use, which has a lot of natural light coming in, affecting the overall environment despite our best efforts to mitigate through exhibition design. This necessarily dictates that we display objects that are more robust, stable, and not as light-sensitive: resulting in a modest selection of 17 objects of mostly ceramics. All of the objects currently on display will be featured in the upcoming revamped galleries of the Peranakan Museum, providing a little taster to our audiences. Hence, we also had to consider which objects are ready to be displayed since the artefacts earmarked for the revamped museum are undergoing various conservation and cleaning treatments.
Our collection’s strength lies in Chinese Peranakan material culture while we are still developing collections from the other communities (for example, the Chetti Melaka or Peranakan Indian community, the Jawi Peranakan community with mixed Malay, Indian, and Arab Muslim heritage). Hence, the resultant object selection tends to represent more of the Chinese Peranakan culture. For example, the ceramics on display refer to nyonyaware, colourful, densely decorated underglazed ceramics with an aesthetic appeal that catered to Chinese Peranakans and were often commissioned. We have sought to balance this by also including other objects that may come from the Chinese Peranakan milieu but allude to practices, tastes, or traditions that are also shared with other communities. For example, there is a display of sireh (betel) chewing apparatus which gives us the opportunity to talk about the practice as a shared custom among Peranakan communities that is also widespread across most of Asia.
For a more nuanced overview, there are also large screens interspersed and dotted around the object displays featuring videos that highlight our ongoing engagement with the communities to capture their intangible cultural heritage. These videos are drawn from an online series titled ‘I Say You Do’ where community experts share or impart traditional craft or cultural knowhow through verbal instructions only (a nod to oral tradition as a means to pass down cultural heritage). For example, one of the videos has Ms. Sushila Roy instructing a ‘student’ on how to make and sew a kopiah, the traditional headgear for Chetti Melakan men.
The videos serve two purposes – on the one hand, we are able to present stories and capture voices from the different communities. On the other, it also delivers the points that while the objects in a museum’s collection may hark back to specific moments in time and risk being ossified, the cultures we are addressing are lived ones that are dynamic and constantly evolving, to offer visitors a glimpse of the cross-cultural nature and evolving Peranakan art in Singapore and the region.
Please tell us about a few of your favorite objects from the Apa Khabair? What types of art and other materials are stewarded within the Apa Khabair? collections?
Apa Khabair? features a total of 17 artefacts on display, with 10 of them being on display for the first time. These objects feature intricate, maximalist decorations that have become quintessential elements of the Peranakan aesthetic. They show the rich diversity of material culture embraced by Peranakans reflecting adaptations and connections to the Malay world, China, the West, and more.
One of my favourite artefacts is a rare wooden carriage from the 19th century, generously gifted to the museum by Dr. Boedi Mranata from Jakarta. This carriage exemplifies the beauty of Peranakan cross-cultural craftsmanship and design. Despite its resemblance to European horse-drawn carriages, this particular one is embellished with auspicious motifs associated with Chinese culture, including the legendary creatures such as the qilin and phoenix. In addition, the woodcarving in relief, as well as the red, black, and gold colour scheme, also suggest Javanese influence. This allows us to extend the narrative scope of Peranakan communities beyond the historical Straits Settlements of Penang, Melaka, and Singapore.
One of the uses of such a carriage was likely a Chinese Peranakan ceremony in Java, known as Tedun, which marks a child’s first steps – an important milestone. During the ceremony, the child is seated in a carriage, and it will be pulled around a chicken cage three times. The child is then allowed to select the objects from the cage, and whichever object he or she selects symbolically represents and predicts his or her personality, interests, and even future occupations. For example, if the child picks up a book, he or she may grow up to be a writer or an academic. This ceremony shares remarkable parallels with a stage in the Central Javanese ceremony knowns as tedhak site, which also occurs at an age where the child is able to start walking.
Another significant artefact with an intriguing story is a red lacquered sirih (betel) set from Singapore, around the early 20th century, which was donated by Cynthia, Larry, Celia, Carol, and Lawrence Chia in memory of their parents, Chia Teck Loke and Ong Siew Choo. The red-lacquered box is decorated with floral patterns, while the receptacles to hold ingredients such as cloves, chopped areca nuts, slaked lime, and so on are made of silver.
Similar to many Southeast Asian cultures, sireh was an important part of traditional Peranakan culture. Search specifically refers to the betel plant, but it is also understood to refer to the entire quid prepared by wrapping several ingredients within the betel leaf. Offering betel quids to guests was once the benchmark of hospitality in households across the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, practised by many resident communities, including Peranakans. Apart from the popular habit of chewing the quid, sireh was used symbolically in traditional practices.
This particular set belonged to the Chia sibling’s maternal great-grandmother, Madam Wee Bee Neo (b.18, a prominent mistress (Sang Khek Umm) of the Chinese Peranakan wedding ceremony. As a wedding specialist, she was in charge of the bride’s hair and jewellery and guided the bride through the proper rituals of the ceremony. A natural development of her role would extend to matchmaking, and a local newspaper interview of her during her later years has her asserting that it would be considered a “slight to (her) powers to see any young man or woman unmarried .” Madam Wee recounted one of the most memorable moments in her illustrious career that took place during World War II. She was facilitating a wedding ceremony when the bombing started. She dived under a table and was soon joined by the bride and groom.
How can we learn more about the history of the Peranakan Museum within both the historical and present contexts of Singapore's Peranakan community? When was the museum founded, and what are the significant milestones that the Peranakan Museum celebrated?
The Peranakan Museum was founded on 25 April 2008, and Apa Khabair? celebrates 14 years of the Peranakan Museum with a timeline that covers exhibition milestones as well as its evolution from the first incarnation of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM). Preceding the establishment of the Peranakan Museum, there were special exhibitions and displays within the permanent galleries of the first ACM on Chinese Peranakan art and culture that proved to be popular, giving impetus to the idea to form the Peranakan Museum. When the ACM was able to move to bigger premises at Empress Place, the building was reassigned to the Peranakan Museum. The Peranakan Museum is a department of the ACM.
The building that houses the Peranakan Museum today is a gazetted National Monument. It was originally built as the Tao Nan School, which opened in 1912. One of the school’s founders is Tan Kim Ching, who was the son of Tan Tock Seng, generally recognised as one of the early Chinese Peranakan merchants and philanthropists in 19th century Singapore.
The significant milestones of the Peranakan Museum include landmark exhibitions like the popular Nyonya Needlework: Embroidery and Beadwork in the Peranakan World, which was the most visited exhibition of 2016 –2017, and the museum's first travelling exhibition, Baba Bling: The Peranakans and their Jewellery, held at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris. In anticipation of the Peranakan Museum’s reopening in 2023, this timeline offers some nostalgia to fans of the museum.
Once the renewal of the museum is completed next year, what will visitors be able to expect within the newly reconfigured space?
The Peranakan Museum has been closed for the revamp since 1 April 2019, and it is scheduled to reopen in the first half of 2023.
As a division of ACM, the Peranakan Museum will explore the cross-cultural art and cultures of Peranakan communities in Southeast Asia port cities. Much like how ACM is organised, the revamped Peranakan Museum is also organised within a thematic framework. Visitors can expect to explore the rich cultural traditions and distinctive visual arts of diverse Peranakan communities over three floors bearing themes related to origins, home, and style as aspects of identity. The nine galleries will showcase various types of material culture such as furniture, ceramics, batik, decorative textiles, jewellery, and fashion. This includes community interviews, recorded demonstrations, art commissions, and other contemporary expressions of Peranakan culture and identity to provide a multifaceted experience for visitors to delve into the question of ‘what is Peranakan?’
How can the public experience Peranakan culture, and how will the collections be accessible to the interested public beyond the walls of the museum since the Peranakan Museum is still in the midst of renovating?
Since COVID-19 has delayed the Peranakan Museum’s opening, we would like to offer our visitors a teaser of what is to come by exhibiting a smaller, more tightly curated pop-up display. Apa Khabair? is ongoing until 29 May 2022 at ACM, and entry is free for Singaporeans and PRs. It is a great way for those who are interested in learning more about Peranakan culture to get involved before the Peranakan Museum’s opening. Families can also enjoy the exhibition with their little ones using a specially created family guide.
In addition to the pop-up exhibition, ACM is organising a slew of programmes called Khabair Baik! Saturdays where we invite visitors to immerse themselves in intimate stories and memories of Peranakan heritage and experience their living culture first-hand on the last Saturday of each month from March to May. In collaboration with The Peranakan Association Singapore, Peranakan Indian (Chitty Melaka) Association Singapore, and Arab Network @ Singapore, the programme includes tours led by Peranakan community members sharing their own experiences and personal stories of being Peranakan, as well as workshops and demonstrations on Peranakan food, style, and performing arts. For specific programme details each month, please visit the ACM Peatix page.
Ongoing are our online series for those who want to delve into the taste of Peranakan cuisine and living traditions. You can check out Peranakan Museum’s collaborations with various communities through Recipes and Stories, an ongoing digital cookbook series, and the I Say You Do video series on the Peranakan Museum’s Facebook and Instagram.
You can also check out Peranakan objects in the National Collection via the Roots portal.