PETALING JAYA, Dec 16 — Four recipients have been selected as recipients of this year’s Krishen Jit Fund to enable them to pursue projects in various arts disciplines.
Introduced by Astro and the Five Arts Centre, the fund was named after the late theatre icon Datuk Krishen Jit a year following his passing on April 28, 2006.
One of the longest-running grant-giving bodies in the country, the fund is aimed at providing deserving art practitioners with financial aid to pursue their passion projects.
This year’s total allocation of RM33,000 saw 75 hopeful applicants with projects in dance, theatre, film, video, publication, visual arts, music, education, training, research, and interdisciplinary work.
Grantees are able to use the funds for training, workshops, attachments or residencies, experimental productions, writing, or creating new work in music, dance, theatre, writing, visual or performance art.
The four grantees who made the cut are Catriona Maddocks, Jowin Foo, Leong Yoke Mee and Aw See Wee.
Maddocks, a creative director, artist and researcher based in Sarawak, was awarded RM10,000 for her contemporary indigenous woven art project that uses QR codes and curated digital libraries.
Foo, a Bartlett School of Architecture graduate, won RM8,000 to pursue his project titled Standard Operation Procedure (S.O.P).
His experimental performance explores the relationship with Covid-19 guidelines as a common ritual to counter the pandemic and the cultural dichotomies around it.
Artist, illustrator and art teacher Leong was awarded RM8,000 which will be used for her series of graphic, non-fiction stories about the music of people of the interior (orang ulu) the Kerabit people in Malaysia titled The Music of Inner Land.
Last but not least, RM7,000 was awarded to Aw for his clay stop motion short film about a husband and wife fighting another family of thieves in a tale of survival and hope.
The selection panel for 2020 was made up of National Department for Culture and Arts, Ministry of Tourism, Arts, and Culture former director-general Tan Sri Norliza Rofli, National Department for Culture and Arts, Ministry of Tourism, Arts, and Culture deputy director-general for policy and planning Salehhuddin Md Salleh, Astro corporate responsibility senior assistant vice president Jolyn Gasper, Sunway University School of Arts’ Leow Puay Tin, Creador Foundation’s Shobana Sivanendran and Five Arts Centres’ Ravi Navaratnam.
Born in 1939, Krishen was an accomplished author, playwright, theatre director and critic who was known for his ground-breaking interdisciplinary, multicultural, multilingual and experimental works.
He was a firm believer in celebrating original Malaysian creativity in all facets of the arts and would encourage practitioners and audiences to reflect on their lives and the society they live in.
