live animals inside
Pudu Jail’s Graffiti
K. Azril Ismail 2008
The source of this research was derived from an old photo-documentation project which I undertook during the six months between August 2002 and March 2003 at the Pudu Jail in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. These images were made from my own first-hand experience while navigating through the prison facility. I used an instinctive approach in documenting both the prison spaces and the graffiti found within the cells.
There was no direct contact with any known prisoners who made these markings, as the Malaysian Prison Department was a separate entity when I worked on this documentation, with permission from the city's Urban Development Authority Holdings. The previous occupants, the wardens and the prisoners were transferred to other prison facilities as it was officially closed in late 1996. Early attempts at making contact with the Prison Department proved difficult as I was an independent entity without any authoritative affiliation, and they had considered my request to contact past prisoners and wardens of Pudu Jail as a breach of security. At that point, the images I had in my hand were of no interest to the UDA holdings or the Malaysian Prison Department.
I carried on with the documentation until the middle of March 2003 as there were plans to use the prison facility as a remand centre. I walked away from the prison and the images of Pudu Jail and the graffiti within have remained quietly in my care since then.
It took many more months for me to process the films; some were damaged during development due to high humidity and the entire collection of images wasn't finished until the end of 2004. 1 had taken these images as a Masters project in a local university, which had given birth to the idea of the possibility that these images could become a concise form of portfolio.
It was much later in 2008, the Weiling Gallery had took an interest in this portfolio and exhibited some 60 images of the works. This first-time ever exposure had given a face to this unknown world of prison art.
The exhibition had attracted great interest from the public and it was even an exciting event for the gallery. This had given me the desire that, one day, this portfolio will finally take its place as a retrospective of the prison graffiti found within the Pudu Jail.
It was a good coincidence that we were publicising the exhibition in the public domain while the announcement that the Pudu Jail was to be demolished was the main point of discussion in the media.
The images that appeared within this portfolio showed only but few kinds of writing. Most of the anecdotes, quotes, and poetry came with very little in the way of bibliography. These graffiti were already anonymous despite the reclusiveness of information to the origin of the authors themselves.
I believe this does invoke an inquisitive nature into finding a common ground on how these kinds of graffiti link the inmates with the devotional objects and subjects in their lives, while ignoring the existence of their crimes or confessions.
The drawings found were necessarily simple and repeated techniques used by those who are not exposed to the rules governing art drawings.
Yet those hard lines on the wall define the spirit of their makers' will and certainly carried a different significance compared with the drawings done on paper. Over the years of abandonment, these drawings remained silently on the dark walls of the prison, and now, these markings will disappear completely from the world as the wrecking ball plummets into the bowels of the prison.
