What is it about Kampung Baru that intrigued you?

My work typically responds to man’s relationship with the built environment and explores the broader themes of people, place and history. Kampung Baru, to me, is possibly the most fascinating neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur.

And the likelihood that it might one day be changed entirely—talks about mega redevelopment in the enclave continue fervently—the urge to record for posterity of this built heritage and lived experience is even more significant.

The work is also a meditation on past, present and future change. When we mention the word ‘kampung’, there’s this glow on everyone’s face, but underneath it, there’s also this angst—how long will this ‘kampung’ last? Kampung Baru is the mother home of homes; how we treat Kampung Baru as it ages will say a lot about our value as individuals and as a nation.

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Tell us about your time in Kampung Baru.

I established a modus operandi of taking up residence in a particular community or neighbourhood to observe its life and rhythms ever since I stayed in Istanbul to work on my first suite of works, Optimistic Melancholics (2015).

For Cracks in the Wall (2018), I lived and worked in Razak Mansion for six months, painting live the residents in their homes right up to the apartment’s demolition. 

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For the Kampung Baru project, I stayed two months in early 2021 with a family in Kampung Hujung Pasir (the southernmost of the seven sub-villages) for my research with the support of the Cendana Visual Arts Inspire Funding Programme. That was during the pandemic time, so unfortunately I didn’t get to mingle with the community as closely as the way I did when I was working on Cracks in the Wall.

But I did a lot of walking, three to four hours a day, traversing the labyrinthian pathways that connect the seven villages that make up Kampung Baru. I observed how the geographies made the people and how the people shaped their spaces.

This leisurely observation inspired painting No. 1, Origin of Place, a re-enactment of sorts of the founding of Kampung Baru, a history that has not been documented in a photo or painting. Here, the enclave is cradled by two mighty rivers and resembles a little Mesopotamia of Malaysia.

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In a way, Kampung Baru is regarded as the focal point of the Malays in the peninsula and where the seeds of independence were first sown.

In painting number 3, Progress of Love, the house is modelled on Abdullah Mohamed Amin House on Jalan Raja Abdullah. Depicted in the characteristic miniature style in cross-section, its multiple rooms and spaces house several stories and temporalities all at once, offering audiences a bustling visual microcosm of society and the circle of life. 

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What was the process of painting like?

I wanted to chronicle the history and socio-cultural significance of this century-old village right up to its present. In search of a formal response, I turned to Indo-Persian miniature. Indo-Persian miniature is a genre that once served as ‘history painting’ in parts of Asia and referred to the religio-cultural background of Kampung Baru’s early settlers.

My paintings collapse time and space, bringing together multiple narratives within the same picture plane to narrate significant events that have shaped the enclave, including its presence at this critical juncture. They tell the rich and layered (his)tories of the place, how the present owed itself to its past, how the future is linked to the present, and how everything is inexorably connected—in seven small paintings.

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Miniature painting is time-consuming and labour-intensive; each painting takes two to three months to complete. I first sketched out the image, refined the composition by tracing it repeatedly, and then the final cartoon was transferred using a self-made carbon copy onto watercolour paper. The watercolour paper is stained beforehand with tea to give it a warm undertone, washed with egg white, and burnished with agate until it’s super smooth for fine detailing.

For the brush, I used Winsor & Newton Series 7 Miniature Brush. The brush was first made for the Queen for her hobby; they are very well made using the finest kolinsky sable but also come with quite a hefty price tag.

I used walnut ink to fix the faintly transferred cartoons and burnished some more. Then it was ready for painting. For paint, gouache (also called opaque watercolour) was the preferred medium for its colour intensity to portray a world without shadow. And I used a magnifying lamp for the whole process.

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You worked with Hani Ali from Lain to provide a 'frame' for your artwork. Tell us about this collaboration.

My work is primarily painting, but I also feel strongly about anchoring the paintings of people and places within an environment that echoes the original.

Kampung Baru's suite of works is presented in a Tanggam structure that also appears in one of the paintings, thereby lending an immersive quality to the presentation and implicating the viewer in the ongoing narratives of Kampung Baru. Also, Ilham Gallery has this wonderful space and provided a production grant to help realise this installation.

One of the main themes in this project is heritage, culture and ancient knowledge, and that they are fast disappearing.

This installation is a wooden structure that forms the foundation of indigenous architecture; its joinery (Tanggam) is a tribute to the ingenuity of this traditional craft and symbolic of the gotong-royong spirit that holds together communities, an apt metaphor for this project.

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I designed the installation by studying the houses in Kampung Baru and from books on Tanggam. Hani and Shira provided the gallery's technical guidance, woodworking and final set-up. Our challenge was how to stay true to the craft of Tanggam, to assemble a sturdy house carcass installation without resorting to nails or screws.

I also wanted the installation to be light, portable, and easily disassembled to be stored away later. Parts of the installation were glued at the workshop and then shipped to gallery to be assembled in situ. You can check out the fun process video on my Instagram.

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Were you influenced by the homes in which your subjects lived?

We are always living in an environment; it is the context for who we are. The inhabited spaces in my work play as much a part as the portraits of people conveying psychological states and narratives.

The painting is anchored by a structure or a set of structures, and past and present residents of Kampung Baru play out their lives in these architectures as if in a stage set.

Buildings and landscapes are depicted in mathematically idealised isometric projection — a convention of miniature painting — opening up multiple perspectives in storytelling. Still, within them, bodies in skewed perspectives are put to work as they enact their aspirations onto the space of Kampung Baru.

Home is the physical manifestation of its owner’s aspirations, and in turn, it shapes the dwellers living in it.  I’m perpetually curious about the relationship between dweller and home.

In my last painting, Middle Way, I made it a point to faithfully depict all four typologies of vernacular houses in Kampung Baru as identified by Professor Seo Ryeung Ju in her brilliant academic journal.

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