ABSTRACT
In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon discussed the various psyches produced in the postcolonial nation by its new ‘indigenous’ government and citizens, and how these may precipitate the resultant cultures and their extent forms. Besides identifying the struggles between colonial forces and native intellectuals during those time periods, he highlighted a group of ‘native artists and architects’ whose task was to represent the new nation and new citizen and give form and shape to those national cultures. 1 These artists and architects would interpret mainly state aspirations or projections through literature, art, dance, theatre, architecture and other forms of expression for its citizens as well as formulate larger external projections to outsiders. For each decolonizing nation, the discourse informed the choice of artists, the contexts in which representations were made and the content matter of the works themselves in response to the exigencies of this ‘new nation’. In this chapter I explore the national cultural productions at the time of Independence in Malaya/Malaysia from 1957 to 1969. The contexts of these productions as wall murals are examined to assess how they were intended to give form to aspects of national identity, national narratives and the national citizen. I argue that a serial reading of the mural form that was prevalent in 1960s Malaysia can provide the medium through which the nation was actively imagined.
