Simon Soon
Born & Lives in:
1983 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Simon Soon is a Senior Lecturer in art history, artist and curator based in Malaysia. His research interest spans the 19th- and 20th-century, including the multicultural histories of photographic studios in Singapore and Malaysia.
In his artistic practice, Soon extends his research into open-access knowledge sharing and digital sources to explore often occluded histories, and to understand global interconnections through the art and visual cultures of Asia. He focuses on the adaptive re-use of historical narratives and images found in the public domain to explore their mythmaking and story-telling potentials. Soon’s is a practice grounded in thinking poetically about strengthening colonial fragments and debris to produce a new understanding of our place in the world.
Simon Soon In collaboration with RJ Camacho, Antonia Aguilar, Lauro Penamante, Arnold Flores, Joseph de Ramos. King Kalakaua’s Hawaiian Travels (detail), 2018 Timber, 50 x 66 x 5.5cm each (four panels) Commissioned by Para Site HK. Supported by Bellas Artes Projects, Philippines Photo: courtesy of the artist and Para Site HK.
Simon Soon In collaboration with RJ Camacho, Antonia Aguilar, Lauro Penamante, Arnold Flores, Joseph de Ramos. King Kalakaua’s Hawaiian Travels (detail), 2018 Timber, 50 x 66 x 5.5cm each (four panels) Commissioned by Para Site HK. Supported by Bellas Artes Projects, Philippines Photo: courtesy of the artist and Para Site HK.
Simon Soon In collaboration with RJ Camacho, Antonia Aguilar, Lauro Penamante, Arnold Flores, Joseph de Ramos. King Kalakaua’s Hawaiian Travels (detail), 2018 Timber, 50 x 66 x 5.5cm each (four panels) Commissioned by Para Site HK. Supported by Bellas Artes Projects, Philippines Photo: courtesy of the artist and Para Site HK.
UNSW Galleries
King Kalakaua’s Hawaiian Travels/Melayu Pono’I, 2017–18
four carved Gemelina wooden panels
Courtesy the artist
Remembered endearingly as the ‘Merri Monarch’, Hawaii’s King Kalakaua is credited with reviving many Hawaiian customs including Hula, in a reign defined by both cultural rejuvenation and devastation.
After the British took control of Fiji in 1874, the remaining independent island groups in the Pacific – Tonga, Hawai‘i, and Sāmoa – were at risk of European or US annexation. As depicted by Simon Soon in Melayu Pono’I, King Kalakaua embarked on an international trip with the goal to secure the independence of his kingdom and its global position.
The King, in the words of the US consul, was “inflamed by the idea of gathering all the cognate races of the Islands of the Pacific into a great Polynesian Confederacy”. Meeting with the consul-general of China in San Francisco, then with the monarchs of Japan, Siam, and Johor, the King sought to garner support for his anti-colonial confederacy.
Yet, much how a drowning man’s final breath may be his biggest, the confederacy never came to be, despite the King’s daring. In 1887 he would agree to a new constitution which led to the American annexation of the Kingdom of Hawai’i in 1898. Known as the Bayonet Constitution, he signed it at gunpoint.
Collaborating with a Filipino illustrator and craftsman in the bas-relief language that memorialised many nation-building projects throughout Southeast Asia, Soon’s Melayu Pono’I connects Kalakaua’s aspirations with the first political uprising in Asia, the Philippine Revolution, simultaneously propelling folk and craft history into the realm of national consciousness.