THROUGH THE LENS of Malaysian Artists

There are many varied reasons why art is important to society—a simple definition of art is that ‘art is order’. And as Malaysians, we’re famous for letting raw talent go unnoticed. Nine out of 10 times, we are unaware of our own local talent until that person has made it on the billboards of some foreign land. It’s even more competitive when it comes to something as subjective as visual art, where everyone’s a critic. Many Malaysian artists who work relentlessly are practically unknown, which is a shame considering how awesome their art is. At Augustman, we believe that good art should be valued and shared, so we’ve compiled a list of talented Malaysian artists and their artworks that are currently showcased at ILHAM Art Show in Kuala Lumpur.

- ZECH PHARAMOND, MELISSA FOONG & ALEX LOW

Chong Yan Chuah is a multidisciplinary artist whose body of work includes digital art, drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation – often communicating with one another. With an architectural background, Chong Yan is intrigued by the intersection between the physical environment in which we live in, and the fictional worlds that he creates, challenging the perception of space, reality, and experience.

In Atl-Aequus and the Five Phases, audience members can take turns exploring the mythological world, interacting with surreal landscapes and future artefacts/digital installations as if they are time travellers teleporting to a mythical perspective of Earth. Utilising Unreal Engine 5, Chong Yan experiments with the temporal dimension by envisioning a society abundant with future mythologies and prospective artefacts without the constraints of location-specific (dependent) culture, ethnicity, and spiritual identity that we are familiar with today.

What led you to explore world-building as an art form?

A lot of my art revolves around the idea of world-building, and through it I explore questions of digital identity, digital anthropology, and all the nuances of digital now. Even though this is the fourth world that I designed, it’s the first project where I tapped into my roots. I was looking into the idea of the Five Phases, and I really liked the beauty of it. These are elements that are crashing against one another, but through the mediator of the soil, they can connect with it. I’m intrigued by the concept of interconnectedness, or “hyper-linkage”, as I’d like to call it.