Goh Ah Ang, the ant artist of Malaysia

Article by Redza Piyadasa

Extract from Masterpieces From The National Art Gallery of Malaysia

"Where There Is Life, There Is Hope" by Goh Ah Ang, 1996

Goh Ah Ang is an artist trained in the Chinese mode of painting and he was initially involved with traditional brush painting techniques. In recent years he has become well-known for his delicately rendered ant paintings. Using textured rice paper as a base, his colonies of busy worker ants are minutely and painstakingly rendered, one by one, with the aid of a very fine pen. The tiny ants are spread out on the white base and highlight the empty void of the white paper surface. There is a sense of busy movement and activity as the ants move in different directions across the paper surface. The inherent qualities of traditional Chinese painting values, with its emphasis on technical dexterity and black and white contrast, have lent to Goh’s paintings a contemplative quality. The viewer is inclined to study each minutely rendered ant in the colony. Time is thus stretched out. The title of the work obviously alludes to human hope and it would seem that the ants are being used as a metaphor to draw attention to the human condition and life’s struggles.