Watching the compelling scene of shadow characters unfold before us, many of us would be curious to ask, like a certain grandson to his grandfather, “what story is this?" or, in Kelantan dialect, “CITO GAPO NI TOK?" It’s certainly different from the kinds of contemporary scenes and imagery we are more used to seeing on a television screen.

Ahmad Ahadiaq Aizaq has chosen to highlight the traditional art of wayang kulit in this work as a precious legacy of earlier generations in Kelantan and Terengganu, inspired by the descriptions of wayang performances related to him by his own grandfather. With roots and continuity in Javanese culture, wayang kulit is designated as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. However, in Malaysia, “the tradition of its story has been buried in several states and it is very heartbreaking that it is not recognized by generations today”. Kelantanese wayang kulit is performed in dialect, and based on ancient stories such as Hikayat Maharajawana and Anak Kerbau Hamuk, upholding “pure values to be nurtured in everyone who observes it”. Like the charcoal medium, the art of wayang can create an intense effect, and yet it is easily removed when it comes into contact with something.

In fact we are observing the performance through a double screen – the digital interface of the television and then the thin muslin screen of the wayang kulit theatre behind which the dalang plays his characters. For the artist, the charcoal medium is fluid and flexible like the medium of shadow puppetry.¬ The artist cleverly differentiates these by using a wet-on-dry technique to stain the television screen the brownish hue of a backlit wayang set, propped against the stark black and white backdrop of a room in the current day. The flat and featureless character of the setting also serves to highlight, in contrast, the fine treatment of the puppet figures, in their subtle movements and shadows, and the details of their faces and costumes which help to identify their role in the story. We find that these are in fact four of the five Pandawa brothers, avenging heroes of the Mahabharata, each upholding noble qualities – Yudistira, Bima, Arjuna and either one of the twins, Nakula or Sadewa, in spite of the hardships they endure under tyranny and in conflict. They appear with the pohon beringin, or Tree of Life, puppet signalling the beginning or end of a scene.