WORKS

The Loom of Memory | Acrylic on Canvas | 36 x 36 inches | $3300

Interwoven Legacies

Interwoven Legacies explores the intersections of identity, displacement, and queer memory through the traditional craft of weaving. Utilizing the structural geometry of the Ketupat, a traditional Malay rice casing woven from young coconut leaves to celebrate the conclusion of Eid, alongside the textile history of the Kain Pelikat (sarong), this project maps an immigrant's journey from Southeast Asia to America. By intertwining palm fronds, historic trade fabrics, and contemporary textiles, the work physicalizes the complex, overlapping threads of being Malay, Muslim, gay, and an immigrant in the United States.

At the core of this body of work is the metaphor of weaving as both an ancestral technology and an emotional architecture. Memory does not move in a straight line; it knots, doubles back, crosses borders, and holds tension.

The Geometry of Ketupat

In my childhood, the act of weaving coconut leaves into a tight, symmetrical diamond shape was a harbinger of festivity, communal endurance, and nourishment after fasting. Structurally, the Ketupat requires tension and precision, strips passing over and under one another to form an unbreakable vessel. Using it as a structural grammar to encase, protect, and interrogate personal narratives of cultural preservation and queer sanctuary.

The American Translation

Layered into these traditional motifs are new memories forged in the American landscape, subtle shifts in light, urban textures, and the quiet spaces of finding belonging as a queer Muslim man far from home. The resulting woven sculptures and mixed-media panels juxtapose tropical palm structures with Western industrial or domestic materials, visualizing the friction and grace of hybrid identities.

Crossing Parallels | Acrylic on Canvas | 36 x 48 inches | $4400

Subtle Shifts | Acrylic on Canvas | 24 x 36 inches | $2200

Tension & Release | Acrylic on Canvas | 24 x 36 inches | $2200

Artist Statement

As a Malay, gay, Muslim immigrant, my existence is an exercise in holding space for seemingly disparate worlds. We often speak of assimilation as shedding the past to fit into a new mold, but true integration is an active, deliberate craft. It is an act of taking the threads of where we come from, the scent of boiled rice in palm casings, the familiar drape of a sarong passed down through trade and time, and passing them over and under the realities of our present. Interwoven Legacies honors that labor, offering an intricate, resilient map of a life built across oceans.

Over Under | Acrylic on Canvas | 48 x 60 inches | $7700

Vessel of Resilience | Acrylic on Canvas | 36 x 36 inches | $3300

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse