Hari Azizan and the Selling of Women

Hari Azizan works as a journalist for The Star, specializing in education issues. She describes her involvement in the arts as sporadic, the most notable of which is her participation in Five Arts Center’s Young Director’s Workshop IV, in which she attempted to stage the controversial play Vagina Monologues. She is also a trained teacher and has worked with children in theatre at TheActors Studio Academy, and community arts programmes with Five Arts Centre. She's currently is on a quest for the big story and the perfect collaboration with artists from various disciplines.

Her most recent theatrical presentation is SOS Times, part of Director's Workshop ,5 which consists of four workshop performances themed on the Communist Party of Malaya. SOS Times explores the private lives of two people who gave everything to fight for a free Malaya: Ong Boon Hua (the CPM secretary general more notoriously known as Chin Peng) and Shamsiah Fakeh (leader of Angkatan Wanita Sedar). Pictures of from the opening performance of SOS Times can be found here

Hari's artist statement:

When they say that everyone should make art, they forgot to mention what grueling work it is. You need dollops and dollops of discipline and commitment, something I, had to learn the hard way.



My pieces look at how women sell themselves within the social, cultural and religious frame. The tudung motif would not go away after the most recent moral hysteria (JAWIgate), and here my sisters ask to be counted.



Titles:
1. Everyone says I love you
2. The little chick who could- a folktale
3. DIY morality