“Malaysian WWII Oral Histories: A Digital / Virtual Art Exhibition”
About the Exhibition
Created by Cheryl L. Nicholas, associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State Berks, the exhibition draws directly from her Malaysian WWII Oral Histories Project, which opened to a crowd of 3,000 at Perak Museum in Malaysia in 2023. Viewers will walk through a Malaysian house facade into a digital experience, where they can watch videos, listen to interviews, and experience an interactive VR environment, which includes artifacts from family collections.
“The exhibition was inspired by my father and grandfather, who told me about their experiences during the Japanese occupation when I was very young and did not quite appreciate them in the way I do today,” Nicholas explained in a previous interview. “These stories provide a historical context for ‘everyday living’ during that time. These are stories not shared in history books as they were the stories of ordinary people, shared mainly within families. And as the storytellers passed on, so too did their stories.”
The Freyberger Gallery is located within the 009B Perkins Student Center. It is open to the public Monday through Friday, 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. For more information, contact Abbey Muza, visiting artist, at [email protected].
About the Visiting Artist
Muza uses weaving, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture to explore narration, identity, and image-making. They frequently use archival and historical materials to make work that mediates narrative through material translation and abstraction. Muza has shown their work in solo and two-person exhibitions at spaces including Tusk, Slow Dance, and the Fondation des États Unis. They have been an artist in residence at ACRE and Alternative Worksite, and have been a Fulbright France Harriet-Hale Wooley Awardee, a Leroy Neiman Fellow at the Oxbow School of Art, and a Visiting Artist at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. They have shown their work in solo exhibitions at spaces including Tusk, Slow Dance, and the Fondation des États Unis. They have a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.