‘Utama – Every Name is History is I’ is an installation composing of a film and 20 oil paintings by artist Ho Tzu Nyen which seeks to interlocute between the literary, documentary, historical and imagined. It draws inspiration from the legend of Sang Nila Utama, a Srivijayan prince from Palembang, who is said to have legendarily founded the Kingdom of ‘Singapura’ in the late 13th century. Featuring the country’s pre-colonial founder, Ho offers a counter point to the received narrative of Singapore’s British colonial past which is commonly understood to begin with the founding laid by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) in 1819. Drawing upon the popular story of Sang Nila Utama, through creative readings of the Malay Annals (Sejarah Melayu), ‘Utama’ unfolds through a scenography of moments, from the Prince seeking a suitable place for a new city, sighting a mythical beast, the ‘Singha’ (lion) that is believed to be the keeper of the city (‘pura’), to having to throw his crown overboard if the ship is to avoid sinking after having been struck by a storm en-route to Singapore, the artwork poetically recalls the ‘ghosts’ of Utama as a way of visually inquiring and exerting pressure on the existing, dominant discourse of history.
