Working through various different mediums including painting and drawing, London based Areena Ang’s art focuses on themes of ‘post-colonialism’ and the emancipation for people of colour. Using bright hues and child-like characters reminiscent of mythological creatures, Areena’s latest exhibition, Foul Play in collaboration with Eric Goh of Mutual Aid Projects, focuses on the pre-rehearsed and hyperreal aspects of kayfabe wrestling to examine the harm of capitalist infrastructures. As a Malaysian away from home in majority white spaces, Areena finds it important to not only highlight Asian experiences of struggle but also joy and self-actualisation. Through their artistic oeuvre, Areena urges us to question: “who gets to be considered ‘winners’ and what are the optics of that?”

Your first solo exhibition, ‘Foul Play’ at Mutual Aid Projects focuses on ‘Kayfabe’, a wrestling term extended as an allegory to discuss the relationship between viewer and painting – questioning the normative structures that have been imposed upon us. What drew you to this subject matter? What was the thought process behind it?

‘Kayfabe’ is the portrayal of staged scenarios on and off the ring as ‘real’, specifically rivalries. Wrestling is incredibly pre-rehearsed, wrestlers can be ‘jobbed’, meaning they are booked to lose a match. We researched a lot on wrestlers who broke ‘kayfabe’, the script and decided to win instead. That was really inspiring to us, as the discourse around that time was very much centered on abolition and questioning the harm of capitalist infrastructure. I have this commitment to rephrasing combat in my work – self-defense is inescapable, but can also be affirming. I’ve always been drawn to martial arts (wushu etc.) and other sports involving the dynamics of two people, it feels deeply intimate that way. We were trying to pull together a show within a month while the space itself was in a state of incubation, so the push and pull in wrestling felt very relevant to the process of building the show.

My process always starts with free writing, I was writing about of an experience of losing complete agency, one of my biggest fears. I somehow started comparing it to wrestling, how its physicality oscillates between sexual tension, comfort and violence. For 2 weeks, me and Eric (the curator) sent back writing responses almost manically. We were both really excited about honing in on wrestling, a subject neither of us knew much about, problematizing the WWE institution and drawing parallels to the time we are living in; where the conditions of normality and labour are being questioned more than ever.

I’m fascinated by the care and dedication it takes to create larger pieces like the wall mural at ‘Foul Play’. The laborious, time-consuming aspect behind producing such a composition is especially relevant today with our hustle and go, go, go mentality. For me, it acted as a reminder to slow down, ingest and question the commodification of art. How did you approach such a piece and what were the peaks and troughs of your journey through creating for your first solo exhibition?

The mural is about 3 or 4 meters long and I had only 2 weeks to actually install it, so on an emotional level that was the hardest part of the exhibition.

I’m still a student, so putting on my first show under such a short amount of time was super stressful. We thought a lot about the power of public art and the weight of painting, which is so entwined with commodity and the early marketization of art. I wanted to historicize murals as their language have been co-opted to beautify commercial spaces, removed from its radical beginnings (e.g. Mexican murals).

The most enjoyable part of making the mural/wall painting was the durational performance aspect of it. Galleries often cover the windows during installation, contributing to the mystification of these spaces that make it even more inaccessible to people. I painted with the windows open, and interacted with the people of Wisma Central every day – sometimes they’d knock to have a chat about the work but most times they would stop to look at it for a while. I didn’t want the work be isolated from the people whose livelihoods have been shaped by the building and its long history in the modernization of KL. The elitist efforts of art world hinder the restorative potential of art and the wider impact it can have on communities, ecosystems.

The exhibition also featured a couple of drawings exploring the processes of professional wrestling. Was there a difference in the way you approached these pieces as compared to the painting?

The show’s inception was conceptualized very differently to how it ended. The budget got cut halfway through, so our ideal version of the show would have been much more immersive and conducive to wrestling. We wanted wrestling rope suspended from the walls and spotlights, we wanted the audience to feel as if they were both the wrestler and the audience, complicating spectatorship. Since we had to really ‘strip back’ ideas, I wanted to return to drawing, which has always stood as the preliminary for me. But drawing has always felt incredibly intuitive, imperfect and boundless in its slippages. I consider them portals.

My favourite work of the show is the portrait ‘Bray Wyatt’ (2020), named after a wrestler whose mask was inspired by horror and monster films. The actual mask is grotesque and terrifying, but I wanted to reframe this as feminine, child-like. The drawing’s transmutation holds a coquettish expression instead of the luridness in the original. It’s adorned with white ribbons that splay out of the frame that is both decorative, funny and awkward – I want to have more fun with my work and the drawings really let me do that.

What first struck me about your work was the way you juxtapose innocence with child-like figures, bright hues and events of struggle or chaos to perfectly encapsulate the way minorities are built to navigate through the disparities of our current social and political climate. Can you tell us about how this element was introduced to your work and whether it has changed over time?

Who gets to be considered ‘winners’ and what are the optics of that? My work grapples heavily with that question, in the context of race, hyper-visibility/invisibility and having grown up in a country in the Global South. I have always drawn from personal experiences of being an Asian person in white spaces, away from home, and the alienation experienced from it. I go to a prestigious school, where almost everyone is white, and the constant pressure to ‘prove’ myself never really goes away. Not all my paintings aim to center the feelings of otherness though, I want to highlight Asian experiences of joy, self-actualization just as much. One thing I have always loved about Malaysians is the ability to find joy in anything, we’ve experienced so much negligence and hardships politically. Joy and humour is its own perseverance.

Wrestling as an art has a certain campness about it, in its costume and movement. Was there a reason you were stylistically attracted to this side of the sport? Where did your interest in this come from?

The costumes in wrestling really have a direct relationship with my investment in colour. I love the brilliance in wrestling costumes and how they draw inspiration from subculture. My previous paintings focused more on form, but I want to play with depicting costume and fashion more in the future, as it is a big part of my personal presentation.

Would you care to leave us with an artist or work of art you’re currently loving?

I’m really over seeing art on Instagram or on the internet at the moment. I saw the show ‘Dead Yard’ by Luton-based artist R.I.P Germain at Cubitt recently. The show featured sculptures, a durational soundscape and a radical reading room of books on black liberation (which I loved). Ever since doing my first show, I’ve been thinking about how exhibitions that push what they really can be; that can see further than themselves. This show felt very honest, and transparent, two qualities that make an exhibition so affecting.