In Quest of Kuala Lumpur's Museum of Ethnic Arts

The city was Kuala Lumpur, the market was Central, the day sunny and a Friday. It was morning and our students, some parents and teachers, eagerly mounted a big yellow bus (not taxi) and trundled towards the city and its paved paradise. Students and parents twittered like birds at the back of the bus, for most of our brief journey and, having circumvented the wearisome traffic, we finally alighted at Pasar Seni (aka Central Market). 

Central Market, which is hardly central and really no longer a market, was originally named the Big Market (Pasar Besar), and had been a meeting place in Kuala Lumpur since its inception in 1888. The current freshly painted building was built in the time of the British (1937), in a rectangular Art Deco style, and has grown from a genuine meeting place to an over blown tourist trap, replete with severely hiked prices and quickly made ‘antiques’. But Kuala Lumpur’s main Central Market was not our destination, its annex was.

Having taken the obligatory group photo, all fake smiles and bunny ears, we herded our young teen flock around the main thoroughfare of Central Market, past psychedelic lampshades made of hardened plastic and figurines of red behatted Chinese Cultural revolution icons. We stopped for a desert which was, seemingly, unavailable (as we were too early at 10.30am). Instead we bought ‘antique’ postcards freshly Photoshoped and dot matrix printed. Then we leapt merrily up the stairs, not to Bedfordshire but to the second floor of the annex, to pay our respects to all things vaguely tribal.

Leonard Yiu, the proprietor, curator and chief collector for the Museum of Ethnic Arts was unable to meet with us on this occasion. Leonard was probably halfway up some long forgotten river in Indonesia seeking El Dorado, Atlantis or the lost continent of Mu with Professor Challenger and Allan Quartermain, making our bus journey seem a tad less than heroic. Nevertheless, going into Leonard’s museum, officially called Art House Gallery, Museum of Ethnic Arts (lot 3.04 & 3.05) was like entering into another (lost) world.

A stern Indonesian wooden statue greeted us, all pointy breasts and big ears. The label indicated that she was of a ‘goddess’ from Nias Island, but she was obviously having an off day, or maybe resented the intrusion of our school children into her relative peace and quiet, as her mouth scowled and her eyes were less than friendly.

Masks galore filled ancient wooden boxes, walls, showcases. Yellow and red seemed to dominate, though a couple of very white masks had been made to represent the intrusion of the white man into tribal lands and culture. Those masks were not terribly flattering, but gave our group of Chinese school children a double-take and a damn good laugh. Many masks seemed Balinese, with the characteristic bulging eyes or long pointed noses of demons, perhaps a remnant of the Ramayana plays. I thought I saw a Hanuman (Monkey God) mask, but it was brown instead of the characteristic green or white, and there was no label.

Our Sarawakian guide pointed out various shaman accoutrements lurking in the museum’s shadows including, yes you guessed it, yet more masks. Masks are a big thing amongst the indigenous peoples of Indonesia, though many now are made to be sold to enquiring tourists. 

One smaller girl was a little fascinated by postcards of half naked tribal women from Borneo. You could see the questions framing themselves in her mind, “why don’t they have clothes of their tops” or “Isn’t this a little pervy” etc. But I carefully explained the difference in cultures, and that in many other societies it was as natural for them to wear less clothes as it is for us to wear more. Her frown and wry smile held some doubts. Luckily there were no photos of Papua New Guinea (Kombai or Korowai) penis gourds.

The pièce de résistance was the iniquitous carved monkey skull, which our guide held up for the children to be in awe of. The skull grinned a ghastly grin, all long browning incisors and hollowed eye sockets. It was gruesomely held aloft by a rattan handle, which only seemed to add to the overall macabreness of that particular object. And, like all good things it had to come to an end.

The children had a very brief insight into the worlds of the indigenous tribes still inhabiting Malaysia and Indonesia; tribes who had subsisted there long before the children’s Chinese ancestors had appeared, or the Malays who now profess to lay claim to a land they have, in fact, only borrowed from those who have a much earlier claim.