ART OF LUQMAN HAKIM
A 16-year-old artist overcomes personal challenges to showcase his adventures through his vibrant art, writes Elena Koshy
“SAY hello Luqman, and stand up please!” his mother tells him half-exasperatedly. The lanky 16-year-old who’s sprawled on the sofa, looks up, reluctantly unfolds his long limbs and stands up, offering an outstretched hand to me. Aida Lim Abdullah smiles indulgently at her son, and says apologetically: “He’s really made himself at home here!”
By ‘here’, she means the art gallery, Galeri Prima, where Luqman’s art pieces are being exhibited. Art Stories by Luqman Hakim marks his first solo outing as an artist and illustrator, tracing his artistic development from the tender age of 10.
It feels a shame to mention that Luqman has a dyspraxia diagnosis, because he clearly deserves to be seen as an artist in his own right, regardless of his condition. Indeed, the gallery is keen to stress that his diagnosis is not the most notable thing about him, saying, “...we wish to promote and provide a platform for artists; young or senior and established or budding, to showcase their talent and art.” — though it is mentioned in the press release about his work.
But Luqman’s dyspraxia is of note, if only to highlight his precocious development as a highly talented artist. “We first discovered his sketches when he was five years old,” discloses Aida. “They were very detailed sketches of the carpet in my mother-inlaw’s house.The perspective was a little skewed but the painstaking details he put into his drawings were remarkable.”
She pauses and looks at her son affectionately before adding: “We saved those early sketches of his.” Luqman’s notable differences have always both perplexed and intrigued his family. Perhaps because of this, nothing he produced in childhood was thrown away. “I kept every sketch of his... even those he drew on tissue papers. I kept them all!” says Aida. His family has been building his archive his whole life — initially at least, in the hope of understanding him better. “Back in the days, little was known about conditions like Luqman’s. We did everything to understand what he was going through,” his mother recalls.
Everything on exhibit, Aida goes on to tell me with pride, sums up Luqman’s life experiences thus far.“He started drawing at the age of 5. Communication can be a challenge for him so this is his form of language.” At school, his teachers used his interest in drawing as a way of encouraging him to communicate; his mother took him out on drawing excursions and entered him in artist workshops to fine-tune his skills. He flourished, says Aida smiling. “What you see here, is his way of telling his own stories.These cumulative works comprise excerpts of his thoughts, his feelings and his narratives”
My own conversation with Luqman is very brief.
In his retiring childlike voice he introduces himself with a slight smile: “Hi, y name is Luqman Hakim.”
“Hi Luqman, your paintings are beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you always like painting?” “Oh yes. I enjoy it a lot.”
He goes quiet, and looks at his mother for reassurance. Then e turns around, and takes ut his phone. He’s lost interest in me. After all, he has said what he wanted to. “He’s really a man of few words!” quips Aida, laughing.
RAISING LUQMAN
Dyspraxia is a term used to diagnose children who have motor skills substantially below what is expected for their age. It has been known by other names: clumsy child syndrome; non-verbal learning disorder; deficits with attention, motor skills and perception. These discouraging labels have all given way to developmental dyspraxia from the Greek for abnormal and doing.
According to Aida: “Luqman was diagnosed as having both dyslexia and dyspraxia, both of which affects fine motor skills and can present as problematic for children undertaking tasks such as writing and even tying shoelaces.”
She goes on to tell me that Luqman exhibited developmental delays from an early age. He was always falling over and was eventually diagnosed as dyspraxic (80 per cent of dyspraxia sufferers are boys). Aida recalls the nightmare of taking him to see one expert after another to diagnose her child’s condition: ‘I was devastated. I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in tears, wondering what to do next.”
The dyspraxia diagnosis initially came as a relief. But for Aida, it posed more questions than answers. She shares: “I went everywhere... from hospitals to speresearch cialists, to doing my own just so I could find out more about what my son was going through.”
The determined mother studied and got herself qualified through weekend classes and self-study, obtaining a slew of diplolanguage mas which included developlearning ment, early childhood and child psychology. “My mission was simple: to find out how much I could do to help my son.”
After years of wading through informaanswers, tion and seeking for Aida tells me that she finally began to understand that the challenge of educating Luqman could be tackled only through discovering how he can learn, by observation and engaging in a continual dialogue of reflection. “If it meant changing the way I view education, then so be it.It’s his learning after all.”
But Luqman also needed sympathetic teachers. Schools are becoming increasdyspraxia ingly conscious of but most are unable to rise to the challenge posed by children with special needs.
Meanwhile, she was fighting to make sure that he would not be sidelined or be left out. Children like Luqman are usually marginalised.“Teachers don’t want to deal with them because they are different.These children don’t subscribe to conventional methods of teaching and it’s just too much work to accommodate their quirks and differences. We learnt to accept that fact because it’s a
challenge for teachers,” explains Aida matter-of-factly. So Luqman didn’t do well academically. “He failed most of his subjects, but the fact remains he does try hard,” she says.
She battled on, overcoming problems with Luqman which she managed to turn into something positive in the telling.“Every time his report card comes out, we’ll try to look out for something good that would encourage him.Even then, his report card was mostly in the red every year,” she says. Eyes misting over, she recounts of the day they received his report card when he was in Form 2.There was silence in the car as she drove him back home.
“Mama do you love me?” he asked suddenly.
Slowing down her car, she turned to him incredulously: “What do you mean whether I love you...? Of course I do!”
“Mama, I’m not a baby. I’m serious,” he responded quietly.
“Okay, mama loves you,” she replied. “Love me as in proud of me?” he asked again.
“I was shocked,” recalls Aida, her eyes
misting over. “I told my husband about his questions, and we realised how astute and sensitive he is to everything that’s going on around him. That’s when my husband asked me to spend more time with him.”She goes on to tell me that it was at that moment, she decided to stop work to be with Luqman and help him navigate through the challenges together.
BUILDING AN ARTIST
Seeing his burgeoning interest in art, Aida encouraged Luqman to explore his artistic inclinations.“I looked for help everywhere.I downloaded a lot of videos to expose him on art techniques, I asked people to teach him and sometimes I guided him myself, although I’m not really good at it,” she recounts.She took her son on a one-month trip to Italy where he enrolled in several art workshops to improve his craft.
“I did everything I could.When we didn’t have the money, I’d take him to places like Sabah and Langkawi where he could get inspiration from nature. I allowed him to experiment!” says Aida, revealing that their house was filled with all sorts of artist equipment, so he could learn anything from batik-making, to acrylic and oils.
Grinning, she adds: “When I’m free, I’d learn something myself so I could teach him and we could both experiment!”
We are talking with Luqman beside us, but he doesn’t look up from his phone; occasionally, he swings his feet and soon — possibly bored — he gets up and walks around the gallery, peering at his art, and sometimes stepping back to look at his body of work dispassionately.
His work is breathtaking.“We’ve been told by some of the painters we met in Italy, that Luqman has a distinctive European style,” she says proudly. Some of the 72 works exhibited at the gallery, with their tightly segmented shapes, faces and body parts, tessellate like vibrant, jagged jigsaws or intricate mosaics. “When painting, his vocabulary expands and stories of his experiences emerge. What’s happening is happening or has happened to him,” Aida says. “It’s almost like he’s transcribing his life.”
A recurring motif — Woofy — appears in all of his vivid pieces.This anthropomorphic black dog-like creature is a mascot of sorts, with varying roles; sometimes a passive observer and at other times, it appears to be an active participant in his art narratives.
“When he was around 7 years old, he came across an accident where a dog had died on the road, leaving behind a puppy,” relates Aida. This puppy was born with a heart defect rendering it incapable of barking.Luqman took to the puppy immediately. A strong bond between the animal and the little boy developed. Continuing, she says: “There’s a photo we have of Luqman and Pebbles, the puppy — which was adopted by one of his teachers.I think it was then when ‘Woofy’ started to emerge in all of his paintings.”
His work comes across like a puzzle —‘Woofy’ is painted in every single artwork and displayed with specific intention. If this seems cryptic, it’s because Luqman’s work may not be intended to be understood at first glance.
Says Aida: “The energy that it takes to try and hear what somebody is saying, that’s the virtue. It’s not an intellectual thing; it’s the act of trying to hear what’s being said.”
And judging by the visual feast displayed in the gallery, Luqman has plenty to say.
Art is a language Luqman understands well.“When he returned from performing the umrah not too long ago, his teacher asked him where he had been,” recounts Aida. “He didn’t say anything.He simply took a piece of paper and drew out his experience in Mecca.”
She adds: “These images are really his reflections on social dynamics around him. He uses visual language to tell a story.”
She is chary now of saying her child is dyspraxic or of labelling him at all. Concluding, she says: “Luqman has no understanding of dyspraxia. However he does understand that he’s an artist, an artist in his own right and (should) not be labelled with this title. It’s important to concentrate on his talent and celebrate how he has overcome his hurdles.”