RECTIFICATION AND HEALING

Okui Lala

PENANG / KUALA LUMPUR

To be multilingual is to have multiple personas—or so it seems in Okui Lala’s My Language Proficiency (2017), a 16-minute video in which the artist simultaneously appears across four sections of the frame, ostensibly conducting a roundtable discussion with herself.

Each figure uses a different language—either Bahasa Melayu, Mandarin, English, or Hokkien—to reflect on Lala’s family history and language experience at school. Though they are supposed to “use the language that [they] feel the most comfortable with,” Lala’s doppelgangers each end up mixing phrases and languages throughout the conversation, demonstrating the artist’s struggle to find the right