On 9 January 2016, Ezzam engaged in a private performance with his mother, Madam Rosnah, to mark his 35th birthday. In a heartfelt gesture, he handed her a pair of scissors and permitted her to snip off his ponytail – a hairstyle she had often chided him for keeping. The remnants of this act are framed and preserved as a tangible reminder of their bond. Several years later, Madam Rosnah faced a significant health crisis that would profoundly impact both their lives. After cancer cells were discovered around her lymph nodes, she underwent major surgery and spent two months in the hospital, resulting in a substantial loss of mobility. Bounded by blood and circumstance, Ezzam took on the role of her primary caregiver, navigating the challenges of providing support while grappling with the emotional weight of witnessing his mother’s struggle. no matter what, i want to be next to you (2024) creates a dialogue on the complexities of love, sacrifice, and the fears of losing a loved one. This video documentary chronicling Ezzam’s daily caregiving activity – offers a raw and unfiltered glimpse into the often overlooked realities of caregiving. It illuminates the daily routines and emotional labour involved as their bodies gradually yield to the march of time.
Director statement
This video artwork is dedicated to my mum, Madam Rosnah Ibrahim.
When I embarked into this project, I sought her permission and consent to allow me to document our daily lives. I told it is important for me to create this work and share our narratives. Aging, deteriorating health and giving care to another body is inevitable. I will never forget the words that mum uttered out once this artwork was completed, I played it on my computer and she said – “now, you have a piece of me for you to remember by once I am gone.”
Bio
Ezzam Rahman (b.1981, Singapore) is a multi-disciplinary artist known for his interest in the body and the use of common, easily accessible, yet unconventional media in his art practice. Working across sculpture, installation, digital media, and performance, he creates works that are often autobiographical, time-based, and ephemeral, aiming to pique viewers’ thoughts on the themes of body politics, identity, impermanence, traces, and abjection. Ezzam Rahman’s artistic practice exemplifies an embodied aesthetics that is deeply political, affective, and phenomenological. Using ephemeral and bodily materials, he reclaims the abject as a site of agency, while destabilizing the fixity of identity, materiality, and memory. By working at the intersection of personal loss, cultural belonging, and queer embodiment, his oeuvre became a vital archive of what it means to live and decay within the body.
Ezzam is an adjunct lecturer in LASALLE College of the arts and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Singapore. He was awarded a joint winner of the Grand Prize for the President’s Young Talents 2015 and the People’s Choice Award by the Singapore Art Museum. In 2016, Ezzam was awarded the Goh Chok Tong Youth Promise Award by Yayasan Mendaki and the prestigious Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council, Singapore. In 2021, Ezzam was awarded the Most Promising Award; photography category for PULSE Awards, Thailand and served The Substation, an independent arts company, Singapore as the artistic director. In 2023 Ezzam was invited by the National Institute of Education NIE, Singapore for their NIE Visiting Artist Programme.
Pebbles Underground is focused on showcasing and promoting experimental, avant-garde, underground, and no-to-low budget projects by artist-humans from all over the world. Absurd, uncanny, witty, humorous, slow-video – all are welcomed, and loved.
Pebbles Underground is an independent project not funded by any government or corporation, and we intend to keep it that way. Main source of funding is personal donations from humans organizing the project, who are artists themselves, and the main drive of the project is formed by the energy and involvement of the organizers, and the public.
