The exhibition ‘Mixed Media from the Golden Period of Malaysian Contemporary Art’ is a vision of curator Zena Khan in collaboration with Aliya Akbar and her husband Farouk Khan, the founders of The AFK Collection. On display at The Drawing Room at Yap Ah Shak House in Kuala Lumpur from 11 to 31 May 2026, the exhibition is constitutive and determinative of the artistically dynamic decades of the 1990’s, 2000’s and 2010’s in contemporary Malaysia, a period that is recognised as the Golden Period of Malaysian contemporary art. What makes these years stand out is the advent of increasingly dynamic and experimental modes of expression among Malaysian artists, with mixed media emerging as a leading genre. Focus on this relationship of mixed media with contemporaneity of Malaysian society, politics and culture is the crux of the exhibition. The Khans have built a reputation as preservationists of Malaysia’s artistic heritage, by collecting over 1,200 foundational artworks. They present this exhibition as growing from the art-historical groundwork established by ‘To Know Malaysia is To Love Malaysia: Highlights from The AFK Collection’, that took place at Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi from April to September in 2025.
Exhibition installation featuring mixed media works from Malaysia’s contemporary art movement.
The shift of Malaysian contemporary art from single, medium-based production to fluid, idea-based practices is both symptomatic of the transformation of the country and also a catalyst of said transformation. Mixed media emerges as a pluriversal language in a world increasingly characterized by globalization, industrialization and fluid boundaries between cultural import and export. By blending painting, printmaking, everyday found objects, collage, and industrial materials, artists embrace conceptual experimentation and unlock a lexicon as complex as the themes it tackles.
Ahmad Fuad Osman, Paint Your Brain* — challenging political narratives through layered mixed media.
Artists like Fauzan Omar, a pioneer of the movement, show how physical layering explores ecological trauma. Ahmad Fuad Osman uses digital prints alongside video installations and challenges political narratives. Ahmad Shukri Mohamed specializes in eco-mixed media, Jalaini Abu Hassan (Jai) infuses industrial bitumen (tar) with Malay folklore and shamanic memory, Choy Chun Wei Uses heavy resin and everyday items to build architectural, canvas-bound commentaries on urban environments. Then there is Rajinder Singh who explores South Asian diasporic presence decolonially. Shooshie Sulaiman and Zulkifli Yusoff utilize elements like soil and sap to create massive room installations. These are some of the artists apart from whom the exhibition also features works by Abdullah Jones, Ahmad Zuraimi, Azrin Mohd, Fauzin Mustafa, Haslin Ismail, Hasnul J Saidon, Justin Lim, Maizul Effendy, Masnoor Ramli, Tan Chin Kuan, and Umibaizurah Mahirismail.
‘Mixed Media From The Golden Period Of Malaysian Contemporary Art’ marks the third time CIMB Artober, which was established in 2020 as the first arts and cultural campaign created by a Malaysian bank and has since become one of Malaysia’s leading private sector initiatives dedicated to supporting arts and culture, is supporting an exhibition by The AFK Collection, demonstrating their intent to contribute to growing the intellectual backbone of Malaysia’s art ecology.
(L) Choy Chun Wei, Construction Site Series Feeding Machine & (R) Shooshie Sulaiman, Negara Kita — material reflections on nationhood, urbanisation, and collective memory.
This is the second art-historical survey presented by The AFK Collection at The Drawing
Room at Yap Ah Shak House, following on from ‘Paintings From The Golden Period Of Malaysian Contemporary Art’ (2024) continuing The AFK Collection’s wider programme of research-driven exhibitions and public engagement. Mixed media emerges as a necessary response to a nation experiencing explosive urbanization. The friction between modern consumerism and environmental decay, or the intersections of ancestral memory with technological growth, slip through single medium representation but are well captured in the boundary pushing narratives of mixed media. As a country balancing diplomatic and consumerist relations within the global order, the mixed medium art of these contemporary artists holds and challenges the lines, pushing back and attempting to protect what is distinctly Malaysian. Its natural environment, its mythologies, its politics and its social fabric. Mixed media gives cover and also blows the cover on all these fraught relationships, an aspect carefully curated by Zena Khan at the exhibition.
Written by Ayesha Suhail.
Featured image God’s College by Rajinder Singh.
