City stories: 'Apa Kata' postcards

Who builds the nation, asks Malaysia Design Archive. More importantly, what if women were at the forefront of nation-building; what if women were advanced to active positions of leadership, instead of relegated to the background on issues of importance? Too often – and no less rightly so – we celebrate the father figures of the country: Bapa Kemerdekaan, Bapa Pembangunan, Bapa Perpaduan, and so on, but what about the model mothers of Malaysia?



‘Apa Kata’, a project by Malaysia Design Archive, aims to challenge our ways of viewing the role of women in post-conflict nation-building; it’s also to celebrate all women, of all shapes and colours, who are building or have helped built this country in the smallest of ways. Instead of familiar faces of Tunku Abdul Rahman and others, we’re confronted with figures of ordinary women imposed onto our male leader icons on these postcards. The photograph of Tunku Abdul Rahman returning from the Commonwealth Prime Minister’s Conference in London in 1960, for example, is collaged with a picture of a Tamil woman taken in early ’10s; the iconic picture of Tunku Abdul Rahman proclaiming ‘Merdeka’ is replaced with a photograph of a woman in baju kurung lining up to buy national defence bonds in 1965; and in place of Tunku Abdul Rahman, again, there’s a female programme operator for Radio Malaya signing the repeal of the Emergency Regulations in 1960.



In 1987, Tunku Abdul Rahman was once quoted as saying: ‘A woman could lead the nation’. Apa kata?



The postcards are available online at www.malaysiadesignarchive.org at RM10 per set of four or at RM20 for the full set of seven. Also buy them at Sisters In Islam’s headquarters.