MALAYSIAN NATURALIST, MARCH 2015
ALENA MURANG took the usual education steps expected of any youth today. After finishing secondary school in Kuching, she went to the U.K. for her tertiary education, studying Management at the Manchester Business School, focusing on topics linked to environment and rural development, for example environmental sustainability, bridging the digital divide and ethical marketing and fair trade.
Upon her return, Alena joined the corporate world with PricewaterhouseCoopers, as a management consultant on sustainability projects. After two years, however, she quit and went into a whole different line – art and music. The 25-year-old of mixed parentage – her father is a Kelabit from Sarawak and her mother is of English-Italian ancestry – expands on her decision to pursue her passion to conserve the environment and the traditions of her Kelabit people.
Upon her return, Alena joined the corporate world with PricewaterhouseCoopers, as a management consultant on sustainability projects. After two years, however, she quit and went into a whole different line – art and music. The 25-year-old of mixed parentage – her father is a Kelabit from Sarawak and her mother is of English-Italian ancestry – expands on her decision to pursue her passion to conserve the environment and the traditions of her Kelabit people.
Doodling a career
Art and painting had been a hobby from when she was young, but about four years ago, Alena says, she realised she really loved art and needed to explore it to the fullest. “I had always doodled and painted as a child. I started taking it seriously in 2011, when a friend asked me to paint a picture of Slash from Guns N’ Roses for him. From there, the commissions started trickling in and I was painting alongside my full-time job at the time.
“I realised I love painting so much, it’s one activity in which I can lose all sense of time, in which I have to focus my left and right brain, coordinate my sight and touch. It’s a very intense feeling. Painting also teaches me patience, resilience, observation and social awareness,” Alena says. Finally deciding to take the jump, she moved to Singapore to study art for a year at La Salle College of the Arts.
Did she face doubters? “Yes!” she says with a laugh. The comments included, 'What are you going to do for money?', 'Why do you want to do this?' and 'After your art course you’re going back to the corporate world, right?' “I was like, no, I have faith in myself. I want to be a full-time artist.”
Art and painting had been a hobby from when she was young, but about four years ago, Alena says, she realised she really loved art and needed to explore it to the fullest. “I had always doodled and painted as a child. I started taking it seriously in 2011, when a friend asked me to paint a picture of Slash from Guns N’ Roses for him. From there, the commissions started trickling in and I was painting alongside my full-time job at the time.
“I realised I love painting so much, it’s one activity in which I can lose all sense of time, in which I have to focus my left and right brain, coordinate my sight and touch. It’s a very intense feeling. Painting also teaches me patience, resilience, observation and social awareness,” Alena says. Finally deciding to take the jump, she moved to Singapore to study art for a year at La Salle College of the Arts.
Did she face doubters? “Yes!” she says with a laugh. The comments included, 'What are you going to do for money?', 'Why do you want to do this?' and 'After your art course you’re going back to the corporate world, right?' “I was like, no, I have faith in myself. I want to be a full-time artist.”
Wildlife on paper
Working mainly in watercolour, Alena has a portfolio of wildlife art that has garnered wide interest. And her start was purely as a favour to her mother. “It began with an illustration to go alongside my mother’s Ph.D. research. She’s an anthropologist studying the history of the Kelabit longhouse through oral traditions, and part of her work involves collecting folklore.”
Alena illustrated the yellow spiderhunter, which the Kelabits believe would bring luck or misfortune, depending on which way it crosses a person’s path; a cicada, also a harbinger of bad luck; and a civet cat. “I posted my work on Facebook and had such a good response,” she says. Orders started to come in, with people asking for specific animals, and she sold about 100 pieces. “I found it interesting how people took to animals. I also did plants, but did not get the same response.
“And then I began to look at birds more closely, being inspired by the layers of the hairs of their feathers, and each piece is a different hue. My parents love birds and as a child I remember they would act as a tag team; on jungle walks, my mother would identify a bird by its English or Latin name and my dad would match it with its Kelabit or Malay name.”
She shares that her love of wildlife seems very natural, once upon a time being a Malaysian Nature Society junior member and taken on family trips dolphin watching, visiting turtle islands to do conservation work and spending weekends jungle trekking. And although she hated jungle walks as a child, she and her elder brother now take time out of their hurly burly lives in Kuala Lumpur looking for forests to explore.
Working mainly in watercolour, Alena has a portfolio of wildlife art that has garnered wide interest. And her start was purely as a favour to her mother. “It began with an illustration to go alongside my mother’s Ph.D. research. She’s an anthropologist studying the history of the Kelabit longhouse through oral traditions, and part of her work involves collecting folklore.”
Alena illustrated the yellow spiderhunter, which the Kelabits believe would bring luck or misfortune, depending on which way it crosses a person’s path; a cicada, also a harbinger of bad luck; and a civet cat. “I posted my work on Facebook and had such a good response,” she says. Orders started to come in, with people asking for specific animals, and she sold about 100 pieces. “I found it interesting how people took to animals. I also did plants, but did not get the same response.
“And then I began to look at birds more closely, being inspired by the layers of the hairs of their feathers, and each piece is a different hue. My parents love birds and as a child I remember they would act as a tag team; on jungle walks, my mother would identify a bird by its English or Latin name and my dad would match it with its Kelabit or Malay name.”
She shares that her love of wildlife seems very natural, once upon a time being a Malaysian Nature Society junior member and taken on family trips dolphin watching, visiting turtle islands to do conservation work and spending weekends jungle trekking. And although she hated jungle walks as a child, she and her elder brother now take time out of their hurly burly lives in Kuala Lumpur looking for forests to explore.
Spreading the message
Alena says survival as an artist is possible, although difficult. “I think any job is hard, but you know what is worth struggling for,” she says. “Fine artists are for social change, they work towards having a social impact, a social voice. I always think that art should have a purpose. For now at least, mine is to communicate the beauty of the natural environment and hopefully this can raise some awareness and education.”
Most recently, the floods in Sarawak washed away four bridges near her village, meaning that residents could not get to their farms and other services. “I took my old wildlife sketches, uploaded them on Facebook and offered them for sale, with all the proceeds going to funds for new bridges,” she says.
Alena says survival as an artist is possible, although difficult. “I think any job is hard, but you know what is worth struggling for,” she says. “Fine artists are for social change, they work towards having a social impact, a social voice. I always think that art should have a purpose. For now at least, mine is to communicate the beauty of the natural environment and hopefully this can raise some awareness and education.”
Most recently, the floods in Sarawak washed away four bridges near her village, meaning that residents could not get to their farms and other services. “I took my old wildlife sketches, uploaded them on Facebook and offered them for sale, with all the proceeds going to funds for new bridges,” she says.
"I always think that art should have a purpose. For now at least, mine is to communicate the beauty of the natural environment and hopefully this can raise some awareness and education." - Alena Murang
This also highlights Alena’s strong ties to her land of birth, and her portfolio of tribal drawings and music are ways to highlight her heritage. Her father is from Long Peluan, six hours from the more famous Kelabit highlands of Bario. “People know Bario and Bario rice, but they don’t really know the Kelabit,” she says. Alena sings and plays the sape, and has appeared at music festivals to keep Kelabit traditions going and share them with the world.
“One of my favourite art pieces is the Tree of Life, based on traditional Orang Ulu design. Usually, it depicts hornbills at the top, close to the heavens, and crocodiles at bottom near the underworld, but I have put all types of animals, not just ones found here. And there’s me sitting in a swing. It’s more a search for identity, as I had just come back from England when I did it.”
And where will Alena’s passion take her from here? Now, having just taken a job with the non-profit Teach for Malaysia, Alena wants to meld conservation with education. The NGO trains teachers for work in rural areas, and has incorporated conservation into the English syllabus, which she hopes will help spread the message of protecting Mother Nature.
Alongside it, she wants to alter humankind’s detrimental love of nature that drive people to keep wild animals as pets, sacrifice them for a taxidermy trophy or, in cases of tigers and bears, as rugs, by offering an alternative in the form of art. “I can sit and appreciate a live animal, on TV or in real life, and translate it into a painting,” she says, “and the animal is not sacrificed.” That may be all one conservationist can do, but it’s as good a step as any.
“One of my favourite art pieces is the Tree of Life, based on traditional Orang Ulu design. Usually, it depicts hornbills at the top, close to the heavens, and crocodiles at bottom near the underworld, but I have put all types of animals, not just ones found here. And there’s me sitting in a swing. It’s more a search for identity, as I had just come back from England when I did it.”
And where will Alena’s passion take her from here? Now, having just taken a job with the non-profit Teach for Malaysia, Alena wants to meld conservation with education. The NGO trains teachers for work in rural areas, and has incorporated conservation into the English syllabus, which she hopes will help spread the message of protecting Mother Nature.
Alongside it, she wants to alter humankind’s detrimental love of nature that drive people to keep wild animals as pets, sacrifice them for a taxidermy trophy or, in cases of tigers and bears, as rugs, by offering an alternative in the form of art. “I can sit and appreciate a live animal, on TV or in real life, and translate it into a painting,” she says, “and the animal is not sacrificed.” That may be all one conservationist can do, but it’s as good a step as any.
For more information on Alena, go to www.alenamurang.com or email her at [email protected]