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Mao Sovanchandy

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Mao Sovanchandy

Mao Sovanchandy, a multidisciplinary artist from Cambodia, and her collaborator Yuryphal Tum, spent two months at Rimbun Dahan in 2025, drawing inspiration from the regenerative nature of mulch, with experiments with water hyacinth pulp, plaster, photography, food and performance.

About the Artists 

Mao Sovanchandy (b. 1998) is an independent multidisciplinary artist exploring mixed-media works that reflect environmental and social issues, as well as societal norms, drawing from self-reflection and personal experience. A self-taught artist with a B.A. in Architecture, Sovanchandy’s practice is deeply informed by the rapid transformation of Phnom Penh — a city where historical, cultural, and ecological values are constantly shifting. Her practice evolves installation, performance, moving image, and social engagement, often centered on the tension between what is visible and what is forgotten. https://www.instagram.com/sovanchandymao, https://shorturl.at/TUjNk 

For her residency at Rimbun Dahan, Sovanchandy has invited Yuryphal Tum to be her collaborator.

Yuryphal Tum (b. 1992) is an independent artist and architect from Cambodia. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urban Planning. As the daughter of a sculptor, Yuryphal was surrounded by art from an early age, which deeply influenced her creative journey. Her practice encompasses sculpture, installation, architecture, and archival work, often assembling meaning from small fragments and found materials. She values the hand-crafted process and the sculptural quality of her work, always striving to capture the beauty and integrity of handmade art. https://www.instagram.com/yury.tum, https://shorturl.at/l4o7r 

Loam Collaboration is an artist-run collaborative space, residency, library, and kitchen in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, planned to officially launch in 2026 after the residency concludes. In Khmer, “លោម” (Loam) signifies comfort and the protection of a guardian spirit. Loam serves as a safe space for Cambodian artists, as well as artists from other countries, to experiment, exchange, and learn. It supports not only artistic practice but also research into art and creative processes, offering a setting where ideas can be tested, questioned, and expanded. Through workshops, experimental art projects, film screenings, creative pop-ups, and residency exchange programs, Loam fosters cross-boundary connections by showcasing work, sharing ongoing projects and archives, and encouraging dialogue between artists and the communities they engage with. https://www.instagram.com/loam_collaboration

About the Residency

Chandy was accepted into a two-month residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2024, which coincidentally overlapped with her participation in the Maybank Fellowship Program 2025. She later invited her collaborator, Yury, to join her at the residency. Their time at Rimbun Dahan became a period of reflection on their recent developments and future direction toward establishing an artist-run space. This envisioned space would eventually become Loam—an artist collaboration, residency, library, and kitchen in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where they now live and work. 

Within Malaysia’s cross-cultural environment, Chandy and Yury explore community work and personal experience on how trace, memory, and transformation shape connection through dialogue and experimentation. Their practice interlaces folklore, belief, and fragments of the past to reveal how time, place, and identity intertwine—drawing inspiration from the mulch process and its regenerative nature. 

In the first phase of the work, they developed their research on collaborative practice through back-and-forth exchanges in Phnom Penh in September 2025. They later benefited from a well-equipped studio in Kuala Lumpur and generous support from Rimbun Dahan, which allowed their project to further grow and take shape.

About a five-minute walk from Rimbun Dahan, we discovered a low-lying pond filled with water hyacinth and its purple blossoms—a plant that grows wild in Cambodia and throughout Southeast Asia in the freshwater. People here call it keladi bunting – meaning pregnant yam. We brought the plant back to the studio and experimented with transforming every part of it—from root and stem to flower—into handmade paper. From the kitchen, through the process of cutting, cooking, and then blending the plant elements in the blender, to pressing it with weight pressure and drying it in the sun like our laundry and even ironing it because of the moisture from the rainy season. The process taught us patience, impatience, time, and the feel of the timeless. This brought us to experiment with using photography print collage, layering tracing paper and fabric with our handmade paper. 

The core of the residency centers on education, sharing, and exchange. As part of this ethos, they hosted the Re:Present workshop with 13 students at Buku Jalanan Chow Kit — an alternative school in Kuala Lumpur — in which students from 9 to 17 years old imprinted found objects brought from home and school onto clay, then transferred these impressions onto plaster. Through this process, everyday materials became moments of formation, unfolding like a mechanical dialogue. The resulting works will be presented at the Open Studio at Rimbun Dahan.

Meeting people here and travelling to nearby islands — such as Langkawi and Pulau Ketam (Crab Island) — has inspired Chandy and Yury to write stories and poems in their tracking journal, in which they collage photography, drawing, and handwriting created from handmade water-hyacinth paper and found fabric from the Cambodian community. This journal is currently on display at Balai Seni Maybank until 12 December 2025, as part of the Maybank Foundation Artist Fellowship Programme. Inspired by their poems and daily experimental photography during the residency at Rimbun Dahan, Chandy and Yury also compiled their work-in-progress into a video art piece shot inside and outside Rimbun Dahan, involving body performance and a poem-reading voice-over, collaborating with local residents and friends, which will also be shown at the Open Studio.

Just five kilometres away from their studio, Chandy and Yury discovered a Cambodian market where they could experience a taste of home in an unfamiliar place. Speaking in their mother tongue with the locals allowed them to understand the community’s livelihood, resilience, and the hardships of their journeys in Malaysia. With familiar ingredients readily available from the Cambodian market, the artists cooked and shared meals with on-site residents and guests, ensuring they never felt homesick.

Here at Rimbun Dahan, nature, forest, and art blend in a beautiful dance, surrounded by a flourishing garden, giving us a sense of peace and home. Chandy and Yury swam in the pool and the lotus ponds, where the otters live, and one day we discovered a sunken boat beneath the deck. It somehow evoked a sense of longing, as if they had finally found a hidden treasure beneath the water—a dream come true. They brought the boat to the studio to become a performative part of their installation; this constitutes the second phrase of their work.

The title of the interactive performance is Terk Kreung. This is also the name of a traditional Cambodian dipping sauce, often known simply as Kroeung (គ្រឿង). The artists will introduce the audience to Kroeung at the Open Studio.. This Khmer cuisine, prepared with fresh fish, sour notes, chilli, and colourful vegetables sourced from Rimbun Dahan and Pasar Kemboja, as well as keladi bunting flowers, explores shared ingredients, taste, memory, and the longing to belong. It reflects both the artists’ experiences and the lives of the Cambodian community living in Malaysia. The act of preparing, sharing meals, and eating collectively on the floor embodies the spirit of family, warmth, and a profound sense of home. 

The third phase of the project will take place in Phnom Penh, where the outcomes of the Open Studio at Rimbun Dahan will be shared. This envisioned space, Loam Collaboration, is planned to officially launch in 2026. Securing and applying for funding to sustain the project is also part of this phase. As an independent, community-based art space, Loam will actively plan and seek grants and other forms of support to ensure its continuity and long-term sustainability. 

Awika Samukrsaman

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Awika Samukrsaman

Thai textile artist Awika Samukrsaman was in residence at Rimbun Dahan from September to November 2025, creating site-specific weaving projects which make visible lines and trajectories that once existed, whether of humans on the pickleball court or of plants interacting with manmade structures.

About the Artist

Awika Samukrsaman (b.1991, Surin, Thailand) received her Bachelor of Fine and Applied Arts (BFA), Thammasat University, residing and working in Ratchaburi, Thailand. She is interested in learning and developing basic weaving for everyday use and communication which is rooted from traditional culture and has been a part of everyday life. Awika’s interest in texture in textile works has brought her into folk wisdom among local ethnic groups. She has been a member of Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture since 2018 and was a manager in 2018-2019. Awika co-founded Wisdomative* in 2019, a platform for developing local weaving art and crafts and in 2021 she co-founded PhiFa collective that runs art-based research projects to retrace, reinterpret and restore Thai northeastern (Isaan) ancestors and heritage.Co-founded Yoonglai Collective,and t-rex veggie brand.

She was a representative artist of Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture in Churning Milk: the Rituals of Things project for documenta fifteen, Kassel, Germany (2022), Jakarta Biennale, Jakarta, Indonesia (2021), and artist in residency program at Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taipei, Taiwan (2019). In 2020 Awika participated in the Exhibition and a prize winner of the Early Year Project by Bangkok Art & Cultural Centre, Thailand (2020), joined Klongsan Fest, Suvarnabhumi Mosque and Charoen Rat, Bangkok, Thailand (2019), Bangkok Layers contemporary art exhibition curated by Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture, Bangkok Art and Culture Center, Bangkok, Thailand (2017) and Pop Up Museum project curated by Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture, Nong Pho, Ratchaburi, Thailand (2014).

https://www.instagram.com/awika_s
https://www.instagram.com/imnualnin


About the Residency

Traces of What Once Existed and the Conditions of Allowing Relationships to Form

This project explores the “conditions of coexistence” between human–human, human–structure, and human–nonhuman life forms. It draws on ecological modes of relating — ranging from mutual support (Mutualism) to restricted, competitive, or extractive forms of connection (Competition / Parasitism) — as a way to think about the varying degrees of benefit, loss, and negotiation embedded within every relationship. At the same time, it engages with the sensibility of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), which regards all things as possessing their own agency and ontology. Walls, fences, grids, branches, and threads each have histories, capacities, and ways of acting upon one another.

Here, “traces” are not treated as mere residues of the past, but as evidence of collision, contact, exchange, permission, and proximity. They function as markers of where something was once allowed to exist, and where it was denied.

Certain human relationships resemble plants that are “allowed to grow only in some directions”—not because the relationship lacks authenticity, but because invisible systems, circumstances, and timings quietly govern the shape it is permitted to take. This project investigates these “traces of permission”: moments of connection that once took place—clear or faint, intentional or incidental—and asks what form a relationship might assume if it were never cut back, redirected, or prematurely pruned.

Work 1: Tracing the Intrusions of Boundaries

This piece begins with the relationship between human-made structures and the plants that attempt to grow alongside them. Fences, grids, and walls become objects with agency structures whose functions, limits, and permissions are defined by human hands. In contrast, branches and vines navigate those limits, seeking small openings through which to enter, attach, spread, or slowly encroach upon spaces that were never built for them.

The threads in this work act as an “extension” of branches that have been cut away. They return possibility to what has been silenced. By weaving new paths beyond the point where growth was interrupted, the work temporarily restores visibility to life that once occupied the space but has since been removed.
It becomes a record of intrusion, resilience, and the desire to exist within a system that grants only partial permission.

Work 2: Do you see the line between us?

This piece shifts toward human-to-human relationality, articulated through the language of textile processes. The weaving process as metaphors for the fiber of relationships,  tight, loose, fluid, obstructed, directionless, patterned, intermittent, responsive, or delayed. Each thread reflects a rhythm and  the frequency of exchanges, the pace of response, the distance one person allows, and the extent to which another is permitted to enter their emotional space.

In the ongoing project Social Weaving, the warp functions as the net of a Pickleball court, while bundled threads (Weft yarn) act as the movement of the ball being hit back and forth. This recreates conversation as an energetic exchange. Each passage of a thread (Weft yarn) through the warp becomes a “sentence,” an action, or an emotional gesture. The gaps between threads, the tension and looseness of the textile, record the intervals, uncertainties, and shifting stability of communication.

Together, they form a tactile archive of a relationship that once existed.

Hewodn

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Hewodn

Agus Nur Wahidin, known as Hewodn, is a traditional instrument-maker and sound artist from East Java. He spent a month at Rimbun Dahan in September 2025.

About the Artist

Hewodn was born in Banyuwangi, East Java, and currently lives in Tuban. He attended the Islamic University of Malang, where he was a member and administrator of the student theatre group. He also joined their music group, and later a Jamaican percussion group in Banyuwangi, eventually forming the ethnic reggae group The Power Rengel in Tuban.

This group, now called Unen-Unen Rengel, continues today, with a focus on playing ancient folk instruments from East Java, some of which are rare or almost extinct. Hewodn has learned how to construct these instruments, and often shares his knowledge through workshops and performances. He also experiments with making sound with stones and instruments made of rontal palm leaves.

Hewodn has created works of music and performance at Melaka Art+Performance Festival, Bantengan Nuswantoro in East Javan, Bandung Art Festival and many other festivals across Indonesia.

About the Residency

Before arriving at Rimbun Dahan, Hewodn attended the Melaka Art+Performance Festival in Melaka, as a sound artist. While he was at Rimbun Dahan, he made a site-specific music instrument installation, ‘The Trees’ Longing for Fertile Soil in the Industrial Age’ . The installation in his studio is welcome to be played by visitors on Open Day on 30 November 2025.

During his residency, Hewodn conducted a workshop in making and playing the traditional instrument karinding towél at Rimbun Dahan. He also performed in Serious Play Improv Lab #93 at Percussion Store in Kota Damansara, with musicians Kok Siew Wai, Yii Kah Hoe, Yong Yandsen and Rogan Kahale Tinsley (USA), and performers Rithaudin Abdul Kadir and Kien Faye.

Joella Kiu

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Joella Kiu

Joella Kiu, a visual arts curator and art historian from Singapore, spent a month at Rimbun Dahan in November 2025, experimenting with writing with a more personal voice and pushing past the thorny exterior of the durian.

About the Curator

Joella Kiu is a curator and art historian based in Singapore. She studies how artists employ the visual, textual, counter-cartographic, speculative and mythological to communicate urgent ecological conditions and contemporary lived realities.

Her writing has been published in AAA Like A Fever, Field Journal, The February Journal and PR&TA. Forthcoming written contributions include a chapter within Tastes of Justice: The Aesthetics and Politics of Food-Art Practices in Asia and Australia (Routledge, 2025).

In terms of independent initiatives, Joella started the discursive online platform, Object Lessons Space, and was host, writer and producer of Mushroomed, a podcast about the visual arts produced in collaboration with Singapore Community Radio. She holds an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art (2017), and a BA in History of Art from the University of York (2015).

https://www.instagram.com/joellaqkiu

About the Residency

For the Open Day programme on Sunday 30 November, I’ll be presenting a new text. A Prickly Affair was written over the short time I spent at Rimbun Dahan, but it has been fermenting in my mind for a long time.

The first iteration of this research was presented in a conference in 2022. That paper was then turned into a chapter, which will be published in an edited volume that’s scheduled to hit the shelves in a month or so. That book, unfortunately, is woefully expensive (£150) and therefore largely inaccessible.

This new text is a spin-off of that research, and is largely borne out of my interest in experimenting more pointedly with a personal voice or embodied perspective within academic or curatorial research. A Prickly Affair is interested in pushing past the thorny exterior of the durian (its exotic stereotype, its reputation) towards a quieter and hopefully more attentive understanding of the fruit.

The text will be printed as physical booklets that will be free to take (while stocks last!) on Open Day. A digital copy will also be available.

Rimbun Dahan Open Day November 2025

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Rimbun Dahan Open Day November 2025

On Sunday 30 November 2025, our current resident artists will be sharing the results of their residencies with the public:

  • Jenny Logico-Cruz and Blonski Cruz of Langgam Performance Troupe (Philippines)
  • textile artist Awika Samukrsaman (Thailand)
  • curator Joella Kiu (Singapore)
  • visual artist Mao Sovanchandy (Cambodia) with her collaborator Yuryphal Tum

An interactive musical artwork by musical instrument maker and sound artist Hewodn (Indonesia) will also be on display.

Entry is free. Registration is required only for the garden tour. All other activities are open for drop-in without registration.
Please bring your own picnic, plus walk about our gardens at your leisure, explore our heritage house and the underground gallery.

Register for the Garden Tour: https://forms.gle/Lv81KpxDmj2Lgohp7

Schedule

9am-11am Garden Tour
11am-2pm Open Studios
11:30am-12:30pm “The Inheritance of Taste” — performance, lecture and sample food serving by Langgam Performance Troupe
2pm-3pm Lunch break — please enjoy your BYO picnic in the gardens!
3pm-6pm Open Studios
4pm-5pm “The Inheritance of Taste” — performance, lecture and sample food serving by Langgam Performance Troupe

Travelling Directions

Address: Rimbun Dahan, Km. 27 Jalan Kuang, Mukim Kuang, Selangor, 48050.

Use Waze to drive to Rimbun Dahan: https://waze.com/ul/hw284q6meb

Use Google Maps to drive to Rimbun Dahan: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ft5fV9YpGsvciCtU8

Landmarks: Our front gate is opposite Warung Selera Ria and also next to the start of Lorong Belimbing. Do not enter Lorong Belimbing, please enter the front gate from the main road.

Tips for Visitors

  • We have parking inside the compound, along the driveway. Just drive in the front gate and park as indicated along the drive.
  • Bring your own mosquito repellent!
  • We are sorry, Rimbun Dahan is not a fully wheelchair accessible venue. Wheelchair access is possible to the artists studios and some of the outdoor areas, but not to the underground gallery or the heritage houses.
  • Wear practical shoes if you are planning to walk around the garden.
  • Bring an umbrella in case of rain.
  • No refreshments or water provided. Feel free to bring your own picnic, and enjoy it in the gardens; please clean up all your trash.
  • No pets, no swimming — thank you for your cooperation.

If you have any questions, please email arts@rimbundahan.org or WhatsApp Bilqis at +6017-3103769.

About the Resident Artists

Jenny Logico-Cruz is a contemporary performance-maker, educator, and cultural worker. Blonski Cruz is a dramaturg, producer, filmmaker, and photographer. For the past 10 years, with Jenny as artistic director and Blonski as company manager, Langgam Performance Troupe has focused on experimental, process-based, interdisciplinary approaches, and practice-as-research works. The group has gained significant cultural notoriety in the independent theater landscape, becoming known as a producer for bold and innovative underground performance works. Read more about their project >>

Joella Kiu is a curator and art historian based in Singapore. She studies how artists employ the visual, textual, counter-cartographic, speculative and mythological to communicate urgent ecological conditions and contemporary lived realities. spent a month at Rimbun Dahan in November 2025, experimenting with writing with a more personal voice and pushing past the thorny exterior of the durian. The text will be printed as physical booklets that will be free to take (while stocks last!) on Open Day. A digital copy will also be available. Read more about Joella’s residency >>

A musical instrument installation, ‘The Trees’ Longing for Fertile Soil in the Industrial Age’ by East Javanese sound artist Hewodn, will be available for visitors to play during Rimbun Dahan Open Day. Agus Nur Wahidin, known as Hewodn, is a traditional instrument-maker and sound artist, who spent a month at Rimbun Dahan in September 2025. Born in Banyuwangi, East Java, he currently lives in Tuban. He attended the Islamic University of Malang, where he joined student theater and music groups. His group Unen-Unen Rengel focuses on playing ancient folk instruments from East Java, some of which are rare or almost extinct. Hewodn has learned how to construct these instruments, and often shares his knowledge through workshops and performances. Read more about Hewodn’s residency >>

Awika Samukrsaman (b.1991, Surin, Thailand) received her Bachelor of Fine and Applied Arts (BFA) from Thammasat University. She lives and works in Ratchaburi, Thailand. Awika’s interest in texture in textile works has brought her to the folk wisdom of local ethnic groups. She has been a member of Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture since 2018. Awika co-founded Wisdomative in 2019, a platform for developing local weaving art and crafts, and in 2021 she co-founded PhiFa collective. On Open Day, Awika will show a number of site-specific weaving works which seek to make visible vanished connections between humans, plants and manmade structures. Read more about Awika’s residency >>

Mao Sovanchandy, a multidisciplinary artist from Cambodia, and her collaborator Yuryphal Tum, spent two months at Rimbun Dahan in 2025, drawing inspiration from the regenerative nature of mulch. They will share their experiments with water hyacinth pulp, plaster, photography, food and performance at Open Day on 30 November 2025. Mao Sovanchandy (b. 1998) is an independent multidisciplinary artist exploring mixed-media works that reflect environmental and social issues, as well as societal norms, drawing from self-reflection and personal experience. Sovanchandy’s collaborator Yuryphal Tum (b. 1992) is an independent artist and architect from Cambodia. Her practice encompasses sculpture, installation, architecture, and archival work, often assembling meaning from small fragments and found materials. Read more about Chandy and Yury’s residency >>

More info about resident artists coming soon…

About Rimbun Dahan

Rimbun Dahan is the home of Malaysian architect Hijjas Kasturi and his wife Angela. Set on fourteen acres outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the compound of Rimbun Dahan is a centre for developing traditional and contemporary art forms. It features buildings designed by Hijjas Kasturi, as well as two early 20th century traditional Malay houses from Perak and Penang, in an indigenous Southeast Asian garden environment which has recently been awarded arboretum status. Rimbun Dahan is private property, and is only open to the public on Open Days.

Jenny Logico-Cruz & Blonski Cruz of Langgam Performance Troupe

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Jenny Logico-Cruz & Blonski Cruz of Langgam Performance Troupe

The co-founders of Langgam Performance Troupe from Manila spent two months at Rimbun Dahan in 2025, developing the auto/biographical performance “The Inheritance of Taste”.

About the Artists

Jenny Logico-Cruz is a contemporary performance-maker, educator, and cultural worker. Her works have been featured locally and abroad including Manila, New York City, Honolulu, San Francisco, and London. She has also collaborated with notable arts organizations and cultural institutions such as The Cultural Center of the Philippines, St. Scholastica’s College of Music, The National Asian American Theater Company, The New York International Fringe Festival, The V&A Museum- Theatre and Performance Department, and Goethe-Institut Philippinen. Jenny holds a BA in Literature at De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines, and a Master’s degree in London’s Theatre and Performance (Viewing, Making, Writing) at the University of Roehampton (London, UK) where she received a Distinction Award. She also taught at the Theater Arts Department of De La Salle- College of St. Benilde (Manila, Philippines), with research interests focusing on contemporary practices and performance theories.

For the past 10 years, she is the co-founder and artistic director of Langgam Performance Troupe, a contemporary performance company focusing on experimental, process-based, interdisciplinary approaches, and practice-as-research works. Under her and Blonski Cruz’s (company manager) leadership, Langgam Performance Troupe has gained significant cultural notoriety in the independent theater landscape, becoming known as a producer for bold and innovative underground performance works.  Her directing credits include: SOMEWHERE ELSE INSTEAD (2019-2020), SANA DEL MUNDO (OR HOPEFULLY OF THE WORLD (2020), [KOSMOS] (2021), THREAD/WARP (2021), and her most notable to date, PANGULONG BANGAW (2023), a one-man adaptation of William Golding’s LORD OF THE FLIES. As of 2025, she is an artist-of-residence for Goethe Institut Philippines’ Performance Ecologies, and Rimbun Dahan’s Southeast Asian Residency in Malaysia.

FB: https://www.facebook.com/jenny.logico
IG: @logicocruz

Blonski Cruz is a dramaturg, producer, filmmaker, and photographer based in the Philippines. He is a Production Design graduate from the De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde. He was a recipient of production grants with the Goethe Institut, National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and Cinema One Film Originals. He has also partnered with heritage institutions such as Fundacion Santiago and the Emilio Aguinaldo Shrine in Kawit, Cavite to create interactive historical tour.

Blonski co-founded Langgam Performance Troupe with professional/personal partner Jenny Logico-Cruz. He operates as the resident dramaturg and company manager. His collaborations with Langgam were featured in the Lacuna Festivals (Spain), BST Journal (UK), the Singapore Biennale, and XSCENA Festival (Manila). Blonski recently finished a training program called Psychological First Aid organized by the Mekong Cultural Hub (Taiwan/UK). This program aimed to equipped cultural workers with the basic tools in establishing safe spaces and support systems for their respectively fields of practice. Currently, he is an artist-in-residence in Rimbun Dahan (Malaysia) for an auto/biographical performance titled “Inheritance of Taste”.

FB: https://www.facebook.com/blonskicruz
IG: @raygcruz

An Inheritance of Taste

An Inheritance of Taste is an auto/biographical performance project that explores the intersections of food, memory, grief and longing, and the reflection of one’s family legacy and its impact on one’s identity. Utilizing an old family recipe book as the main text for performance, An Inheritance of Taste embarks on a performative dialogue between the past and the present. The past: a deceased matriarch (performed by Jenny Logico-Cruz) whose voice remains in the faded pages of a generational recipe book of Filipino dishes she once composed and compiled for her family before her passing. And the present: a daughter (also performed by Jenny Logico-Cruz) who decides to revisit the dishes of her childhood through the same recipe book, after more than 20 years ago since her mother died.

The central action of this dialogue between past and present is the very act and process of cooking—as dictated by the family recipe book itself. The performance aims to tackle the cooking process as a form of seánce that reconnects ancestors and descendants into the familiar reunion taste and smells, as well as create further discourse and communion between the subjective narrative of the performer (cook) and the objective experience of the audience (diners). 

Mother and daughter.
Garilao-Logico Cook Book
Mother and son.

During the residency at Rimbun Dahan, and immersed in the backdrop of Kuang’s slow-paced, leisurely nature, artists are finally afforded the time and space to dive deep into these heirloom recipes with invested attention into their time-intensive, laborious cooking process—which otherwise would have been unmanageable if conducted in the artists’ home city (fast-paced Metro Manila). Apart from committing to the recipes’ element of traditionally durational process, the artists further investigate on the notion of “taste memory,” as asserted by Jenny Logico-Cruz’s mother, as the only powerful “secret ingredient” in recreating these inherited dishes. The artist’s mother notes in her letter dated September 17, 2003: “The secret is this […] you have to remember how you have tasted the dish.” Taking up on this challenge, the artists explore on how such recipes can still maintain the same flavor profile despite being uprooted from their original Philippine locality and transposed using locally available produce in Malaysia. The challenge transforms, beyond just a mere exercise on cooking, but more so as an exercise on memory—memory as a potent muscle that intersects intuition, communal/personal history, and intangible inheritance; memory as the unquantifiable yet ultimate ingredient that navigates and instructs a dish together, transcending limitations and differences in cultural produce.

More info about Langgam Performance Troupe:

Website: www.langgamperformancetroupe.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/LanggamPT
IG: @langgampt

SEA Dance Collective

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SEA Dance Collective

Trần Minh Hải (b.1993) is a contemporary dance artist and choreographer based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Ny&Khun: Sreynoch Khun (b.1996) and Ny Lai (b.1997) are a contemporary duo based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Muhamad Erdifadilah (b.1997) is a musician from Bangka Island, Indonesia.
Pebri Irawan (b.1997) a dancer-choreographer of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Briefly accompanied by Chan Kar Kah, artist and educator of Marrow Collective and Suiyi Dance Company, Malaysia.

We are Southeast Asian artists who met at Southeast Asian Choreolab 2024 in George Town, Penang. During the program, we formed a strong connection not just through training, but through deep conversations about our work, ideas, and what matters to us. We shared how we create, what inspires us, and our thoughts about art, culture, and the world. Even though we come from 3 different countries, we found many similarities in our culture, how we think and work. This connection is still new, yet we want to keep exploring it. We hope to create something special together. We believe in strong visuals and the idea of “less is more.”

On Sunday 24 July, together with invited members of local dance community, we will perform a short outdoor ritual in the garden at Rimbun Dahan. What you’re about to witness is a living painting. Over the past two months, we’ve been living, listening, moving, and creating at Rimbun Dahan. In the stillness surrounded by nature and time, we found something we now want to share with you, not to impress but to express. This is a spiritual offering and meditation in motion. We’re not here to show off yet we’re here to show up. With every step, every pause, every breath, we’re painting. Painting with the colors of silence, of calm, of curiosity. This is a time for simply being.

Renz Baluyot

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Renz Baluyot

About the Artist

Renz Baluyot (b. 1989, Saudi Arabia) focuses his art practice on the relevance of the past to the present, specifically in socio-political narratives situated within present-day urban realities. His work centers on urban decay (rust, tarpaulins, and objects) and artifacts, alongside traditional still life and landscapes. From these elements, he questions the temporality of urban destruction and investigates how these marks of the past have influenced the present under oppressive political and economic systems.

While primarily a painter, Renz Baluyot has worked on sculpture, textiles, and installations aiming to redefine relations with communities and collective memory. Inspired by craft practices and traditions from local artisans, he explores his identity within postcolonial societal structures. He weaves archives with oral histories in order to amplify marginalized perspectives. Baluyot discovers ways in which alternative knowledge manifests through his practice.

Baluyot received his BFA from the University of the Philippines, Diliman and completed artist residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VA, US), Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency (NY, US), Orange Project (Bacolod City, PH), Bellas Artes Projects (Bataan, PH), YOD AIR Program (Osaka, JP), and was selected for a fellowship grant at the Vermont Studio Centre (VT, US). In 2019, he was one of the artists presented at the exhibition Living Earth: Contemporary Philippine Art, curated by Luca Beatrice and Patrick Flores in Milan, Italy.

Baluyot received the Juror’s Choice Award of Merit in the 25th Philippine Art Awards (2020) and was one of the finalists in the Ateneo Art Awards – Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art (2021) for his exhibition, Empire at West Gallery. He lives and works in Manila, Philippines.

www.renzbaluyot.com
www.instagram.com/renz.baluyot

About the Residency

At Rimbun Dahan, I took the chance to play with new materials and techniques that I’ve been curious about and might bring into my practice later on. I started these experiments in May during my first month, carried them over to my residencies in New York (Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency) and Virginia (Virginia Center for the Creative Arts) in June and July, and concluded them back in Malaysia this August for my final month at Rimbun Dahan.

One of the first things I tried was batik, mixing it with my practice of dyeing fabrics with rust, to learn to utilize and control the medium better. I was especially interested in how wax works as a “resist” material, so I began using it to highlight words shared between Malay, Indonesian, and Filipino that, in their own way, have resisted Western colonial influence and still shape how our languages connect today.

I also revisited an idea that I have wanted to pursue for a while: working with copper and aluminum as grounds for painting and mixed media, which connects back to my interest in urban decay and industrial materials. As an alternative to using actual metals, I painted copper tones on paper instead, using letter decals as a resist material between paint layers, still inspired by the batik process.

Throughout all this, I made graphite drawings of the places I stayed in Malaysia and the US as a way to document my residency journey.

Travel supported by MCAD Benilde Travel Bursary (2025).

Rimbun Dahan Open Day August 2025

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Rimbun Dahan Open Day August 2025

On Sunday 24 August, our resident artists Renz Baluyot (Philippines), Alice Sarmiento (Philippines), and MixerJ (Myanmar), as well as contemporary dance choreographers Sreynoch Khun and Ny Lai (Cambodia) and Trần Minh Hải (Vietnam) will share works they have created during their residency and insights into their artistic practice. Angela Hijjas will also give a morning tour of her 14-acre native garden.

Entry is free. Registration is required only for the garden tour.
BYO picnic, plus walk about our gardens at your leisure, explore our heritage house and the underground gallery.

Register for the Garden Tour: [UPDATE: Registration for the garden tour is full. All other activities on Open Day are free for drop-in entry, from 11am to 6pm.]

9am-11am Garden Tour
11am-2pm Open Studios
2pm-3pm Lunch break — please enjoy your BYO picnic in the gardens!
3pm-6pm Open Studios
3pm-4pm Alice Sarmiento in conversation with Wendy Sia (Gerimis)
4pm-5pm Contemporary dance collaboration demonstration and group practice

Travelling Directions

Address: Rimbun Dahan, Km. 27 Jalan Kuang, Mukim Kuang, Selangor, 48050.

Use Waze to drive to Rimbun Dahan: https://waze.com/ul/hw284q6meb

Use Google Maps to drive to Rimbun Dahan: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ft5fV9YpGsvciCtU8

Landmarks: Our front gate is opposite Warung Selera Ria and also next to the start of Lorong Belimbing. Do not enter Lorong Belimbing, please enter the front gate from the main road.

Tips for Visitors

  • We have parking inside the compound, along the driveway. Just drive in the front gate and park as indicated along the drive.
  • Bring your own mosquito repellent!
  • We are sorry, Rimbun Dahan is not a fully wheelchair accessible venue. Wheelchair access is possible to the artists studios and some of the outdoor areas, but not to the underground gallery or the heritage houses.
  • Wear practical shoes if you are planning to walk around the garden.
  • Bring an umbrella in case of rain.
  • No refreshments or water provided. Feel free to bring your own picnic, and enjoy it in the gardens; please clean up all your trash.
  • No pets, no swimming — thank you for your cooperation.

If you have any questions, please email arts@rimbundahan.org or WhatsApp Bilqis at +6017-3103769.

About the Resident Artists

Renz Baluyot, visual artist from the Philippines, was in residence at Rimbun Dahan for two months in 2025, experimenting with dyeing fabrics with rust using a resist technique, and working with copper and aluminium as grounds for paintings. Born 1989, Saudi Arabia, Renz focuses his art practice on the relevance of the past to the present. His work centers on urban decay (rust, tarpaulins, and objects) and artifacts, alongside traditional still life and landscapes, investigating how these marks of the past have influenced the present under oppressive political and economic systems. Primarily a painter, Renz Baluyot has worked on sculpture, textiles, and installations. He received his BFA from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, and has completed a number of artist residencies in the USA, Japan and the Philippines. In 2019, he was one of the artists presented at the exhibition Living Earth: Contemporary Philippine Art, curated by Luca Beatrice and Patrick Flores in Milan, Italy.

MixerJ, a visual artist of Karen descent from Myanmar, has spent two months in residence at Rimbun Dahan, creating character drawings in his signature intricate abstract style, and transforming them into portable cutouts. Originally based in Yangon until 2024, MixerJ has since continued his art practice by spending most of his time in Bangkok, Thailand, and traveling between neighboring countries. MixerJ studied graphic design for commercial purposes, and since 2017, he has been actively participating in the Myanmar art scene as a visual artist. He has previously exhibited his work in both Yangon, Myanmar, and Bangkok, Thailand. In 2024, MixerJ took part in the “Artistic Response to Burma to Myanmar” exhibition organized by the British Council Yangon in collaboration with the British Museum. His artwork, “The Weaving Dream: A Peaceful Home with Beautiful Bedrooms,” was acquired by the British Museum for its permanent collection.

Educator, freelance writer and independent curator Alice Sarmiento (PHIL) will be in conversation with Wen Di Sia artist, writer, and advocate from Gerimis Art, a group that documents and supports the arts, culture, and local economy of the Orang Asli. Alice will also be sharing printed drafts of the Malaysia sections of ‘Once A Vibrant Tradition’, a text that negotiates the tensions of craft and community caught in the crosshairs of capitalism. Alice’s writing and curatorial work centers feminist, relational, and community-engaged practices, while her work as a critic casts a feminist lens across Filipino cultural production, ranging from contemporary art to Pinoy showbiz. As a curator, Alice has worked on the curatorial teams of the inaugural (and so far, only) Manila Biennial in 2018 as well as the Visayas Visual Art Exhibition and Conference (VIVA ExCon) in 2023. Before returning to Rimbun Dahan for the second month of her residency in August 2025, she founded Spare Bedroom, a space for restaging installative and relational works, in order to extend their public programs and reactivate engagement with their community.

Contemporary dance choreographers Sreynoch Khun and Ny Lai (Cambodia) and Trần Minh Hải (Vietnam) are in residence at Rimbun Dahan in August 2025, and will give a short showing of their meditative walking ritual on Open Day including a few members of the local community. The choreographers met at the Southeast Asian Choreolab at George Town Festival last year, and they are continuing to explore their cultural links during their 2-month residency. Even though they come from three different countries, they have found many similarities in their cultures, how they think and work. Collectively, they believe in strong visuals and the idea of “less is more.” They have devised a simple walking ritual inspired by honouring the dead across different traditions, incorporating heritage textiles. If you would like to be part of this offering performance, please WhatsApp 017-310 3769. More info about their collective residency.

About Rimbun Dahan

Rimbun Dahan is the home of Malaysian architect Hijjas Kasturi and his wife Angela. Set on fourteen acres outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the compound of Rimbun Dahan is a centre for developing traditional and contemporary art forms. It features buildings designed by Hijjas Kasturi, as well as two early 20th century traditional Malay houses from Perak and Penang, in an indigenous Southeast Asian garden environment which has recently been awarded arboretum status. Rimbun Dahan is private property, and is only open to the public on Open Days.

MixerJ

admin Southeast Asian Arts Residency ,
MixerJ

MixerJ, a visual artist of Karen descent from Myanmar, has spent two months in residence at Rimbun Dahan, creating character drawings in his signature intricate abstract style, and transforming them into portable cutouts.

About the Artist

Saw Nyan Linn Htet (b.1999), known professionally as MixerJ, is a visual artist of Karen descent from Myanmar. Originally based in Yangon until 2024, MixerJ has since continued his art practice by spending most of his time in Bangkok, Thailand, and traveling between neighboring countries.

MixerJ studied graphic design for commercial purposes, and since 2017, he has been actively participating in the Myanmar art scene as a visual artist.

His practice centers on intricate ink drawings composed of vibrant colors and dense patterns, featuring repeating lines, dots, and geometric shapes, which are influenced by his interest in design aesthetics. At first, his works may appear purely abstract—but gradually, his abstract forms turn into character-based compositions, where he uses those characters to tell stories.

Through visual storytelling, his work engages with human nature and behavior, confronting moral dilemmas and acts of rebellion tied to social and political realities that shape both his identity and his environment. MixerJ’s practice transforms personal realities into myth-like figures that exist between chaos and clarity, memory and imagination, belief and breakdown.

He has previously exhibited his work in both Yangon, Myanmar, and Bangkok, Thailand. In 2024, MixerJ took part in the “Artistic Response to Burma to Myanmar” exhibition organized by the British Council Yangon in collaboration with the British Museum. His artwork, “The Weaving Dream: A Peaceful Home with Beautiful Bedrooms,” was acquired by the British Museum for its permanent collection.

https://www.instagram.com/mixerj_

About the Residency

I spent two months at Rimbun Dahan, divided into two periods: the first in February and the second in August. Before coming here, I had been living mostly in Bangkok, Thailand, since leaving Myanmar in early 2024. However, after my first residency period, circumstances prevented me from returning to Bangkok.

That was the main reason I began creating small character drawings in various postures during my first month stay, using my usual intricate and abstract drawing style. These pieces were designed to be portable, something I could easily carry with me wherever I travelled. In the months between my two stays, I produced quite a number of these drawings.

When I returned to Rimbun Dahan in August, I began transforming the drawings into paper cutouts, inspired by memories of my childhood, when I would cut characters from comic journals and invent my own storylines. This project grew into a way of telling the stories I have experienced, heard, and learned from different environments, moving between countries, meeting strangers, and sharing time with people from many walks of life. I am focusing during this time to create a visual work that can be assembled easily, removed, and carried around safely.

Through this work, I aim to reflect the fragility of human nature, the hopefulness of life, and the resilience of dreams. Stories have been with us since birth as lullabies, as bedtime stories. And as we grow older, they evolve into countless forms of narrative as novels, ideologies, and news, which shape and reshape the way we see the world. I believe we are both carriers of stories, and stories themselves, carried through the world by the lives we live.