Sorga Rawa: Where Earth Becomes Myth And Mud Becomes Ritual

By Lara Kramer  •  25 Feb 2025 in Art

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Within the quiet sanctum of The Back Room, an exhibition beckons—one that does not merely invite passive viewing but demands immersion, reverence, and the willing surrender of clean feet.

Sorga Rawa (Bog Paradise), a solo installation by W. Rajaie, is more than an exhibition; it is an ecosystem of myth, materiality, and metaphysical inquiry, taking the form of a singular, all-encompassing work that transforms the gallery into an altar of earth and ritual.

For years, Rajaie has established himself as an artist whose medium is soil—compressed into textured panels, fissured with time, whispering of entropy and permanence in the same breath.

Sorga Rawa expands this preoccupation into an embodied landscape, inviting visitors not only to see but to feel, and—on select occasions—to touch, quite literally, by stepping into the work itself.

This deepened engagement finds its climax in the Upacara Cemar Tapak (Ceremony of Stained Feet), a rare moment when the public is permitted to traverse the mud-laden space barefoot, an act that blurs the line between observer and participant, between sacred and profane.

Behind the enigmatic materiality of Sorga Rawa lies an intricate world of Rajaie’s own mythmaking: a fisherman’s village in a swamp, a tragedy that taints the waters, a pregnant girl, a burning jetty, and, paradoxically, paradise.

Here, the elements of nature—soil, water, oil infused with saffron and musk—are not merely artistic materials but conduits for a larger narrative, one that suggests that meaning, like mud, is malleable, shaped by touch, history, and belief.

The exhibition also plays with the inherent sanctity of the gallery space itself. Where galleries typically impose unspoken laws of conduct—no touching, no loud voices, no lingering beyond a certain gaze—Rajaie reconfigures these restrictions into new rites.

The prescribed etiquette of Sorga Rawa mirrors institutionalised reverence but shifts its object: from art as artefact to art as experience.

What, after all, is the difference between the hush of a museum and the hush of a shrine? Rajaie probes this question not with direct confrontation but with quiet, immersive provocation.

For those seeking to enter Sorga Rawa in its full sensory dimension, the Upacara Cemar Tapak will be held on 27 February, 8 March, and 9 March 2025.

Outside these dates, visitors may only witness the installation from the gallery threshold, a reminder that access—whether to art, to truth, or to transcendence—is often conditional.

With Sorga Rawa, Rajaie continues his excavation into the intersections of materiality and mysticism, offering an experience that is at once terrestrial and otherworldly. To stand before it is to be confronted with the slow, inevitable processes of nature and narrative alike—to walk upon it is to be marked by its weight, quite literally. Either way, one does not leave unscathed.

TL;DR: Event Details

• Sorga Rawa (Bog Paradise) by W. Rajaie
• On view: 16 February – 9 March 2025
• Venue: The Back Room, The Zhongshan Building, Kuala Lumpur
• Open: Wednesday – Sunday, 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.
• Upacara Cemar Tapak (Ceremony of Stained Feet): Visitors can walk through the installation barefoot on 27 February, 8 March, and 9 March (12 p.m. – 6 p.m.).