Malaysia sculpture artist M. Sahzy was in residence at Rimbun Dahan for one month in March 2025.
About the Artist
Born in 1996, M. Sahzy, an artist and sculptor residing in Kuching, Sarawak, draws inspiration from the lush jungle surroundings, crafting surreal sculptures from organic materials found within.
Each artwork is a testament to his deep connection with nature, reflecting the intricate interplay between materials, environment, and his boundless imagination. Spending weeks or even months on each piece, Sahzy infuses his sculptures with personal narratives and experiences, creating a captivating visual journey for the viewer. In addition to natural elements, Sahzy seamlessly incorporates discarded man-made objects, further enriching the storytelling aspect of his creations.
Through his artworks, Sahzy invites people to think about change, strength, and the cycles of life. He also highlights his deep interest in forgotten objects and the spaces they inhabit.
About the Residency
During my one-month art residency at Rimbun Dahan, I embraced the challenge of creating an installation and sculptures that carried a familiar narrative—but using entirely new materials and spaces, far from my usual resources in Sarawak.
The lush forest of Rimbun Dahan became both my muse and my source of materials. I collected discarded objects scattered throughout the woodland, transforming forgotten fragments into something meaningful. With my studio nestled so close to the forest, I was able to fully immerse myself in the creative process.
Each day, the symphony of rustling leaves, the earthy scent of damp soil, the presence of monkeys, birds, and frogs, and the textures of bark and trees guided my hands.
What began as an experiment in adaptation became a month-long dialogue between nature and creation.
Now, Gerbang Alam / Portals stands complete—a testament to the beauty of reinvention and the quiet whispers of the forest that shaped it.
The Otters sculpture, crafted from driftwood and ironwood, will find its place by the lake at Rimbun Dahan—a fitting home for its spirit.
An exhibition of new abstract artworks by Hijjas Kasturi, created since his first solo exhibition ‘Renewal’ in 2022, and launched in conjunction with his 88th birthday.
Time and date: 10am to 5pm, Saturdays & Sundays 28 September to 20 October 2024 Weekday visits by appointment only.
Venue: Underground Gallery Rimbun Dahan Km. 27 Jalan Kuang Mukim Kuang, Selangor, 48050.
All the works are for sale. 50% of profits from the exhibition will go to UNRWA to support the Palestinian people.
During your visit, you are welcome to walk about the garden at Rimbun Dahan, and to visit the Rumah Uda Manap heritage house. No refreshments provided; please bring your own picnic if you want!
To make an appointment for a visit on weekdays, please email arts@rimbundahan.org or WhatsApp +6017 310 3769.
Download the full exhibition price list, with images: PDF 1.07MB [This price list has been compressed. To request a larger copy of the price list by link or email, please use contact below:]
Pictured top: 𝘐𝘮𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘢𝘯 𝘋𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘬 𝘐, 2024, enamel paint & acrylic on canvas, 152 x 122 cm. [SOLD] Click on the images below to view more details, price and larger image.
About the Artist
Born to a poor family in Singapore in 1936, Hijjas bin Kasturi witnessed the Japanese occupation and the powerful movement for independence in Sumatra where his family found refuge. Returning to Singapore after the war, he attended Kota Raja primary school and won a place at Raffles Institution where he was a mediocre student (while working nights binding bales of newspapers) but an enthusiastic explorer. He didn’t qualify for university so he worked as a draughtsman at the Singapore Housing Trust, while studying art at weekends and architecture by correspondence.
After writing to every university he could find seeking bursaries, the Australian government offered Hijjas a Colombo Plan scholarship to study architecture, which was a life changing opportunity. He studied in Adelaide and Melbourne and graduated with a degree in architecture and a diploma in town and regional planning, and then returned to Singapore with his young family.
Finding few opportunities there for his great ambitions to practice, teach and build, he moved to Malaysia at the invitation of Tun Razak and MARA, the Majlis Amanah Rakyat, who were looking for someone to start a school for Form 4 drop-outs that would give them technical skills to support national development; the MARA Institute of Technology was born, later to become UiTM. Hijjas’ ambition was to provide young people with the opportunity for an education that could alter their lives. He was strongly influenced by Bauhaus ideas and included a wide variety of experiences for the kampong youth that made up his student body.
Starting his own architectural practice was a struggle; in the late 60s there was little work and less money, but educational buildings became Hijjas’ forte, designing junior science colleges, libraries and facilities for the many new universities started at that time, as well as planning new townships in Pahang for the FELDA Triangle. In the ‘70s and ‘80s he designed and supervised the construction of many high rise buildings such as Bangunan Dato Zainal, Tabung Haji HQ, Menara MPPJ, Apera building and won the international competition for Malayan Banking’s HQ. He also completed regional offices for Bank Negara and community centres for the state of Sarawak; and in the ‘90s there were many institutional projects like the Convention Centre in Putrajaya. He did some international work, most notably the Al-Faisal University in Riyadh where he designed for the inclusion of women in the student body, but decided he was best suited to working in Malaysia.
Hijjas continues to teach at various universities, and contributes to seminars and academic programmes. He is a member of the Malaysian Academy of Sciences.
Hijjas has been awarded the PAM Gold Medal, five honorary doctorates from Australian and Malaysian Universities, the ASEAN Award in 1990 in recognition of his work in the arts and architecture, and the Tokyo Creation Award, also in 1990. His family and practice published a book on his life and practice, Concrete, Metal, Glass in 2006, that records his professional work.
One factor that has constantly guided Hijjas’ life is his wish to “pay back” to society for all the support that he has enjoyed that made his success possible. This was his objective in starting the artists’ residencies at his family home, Rimbun Dahan, thirty years ago in 1994. The programme has hosted and supported hundreds of Malaysian, Australian and ASEAN artists and writers, and continues to do so.
Catalogue Essay
My father has a favourite anecdote about Picasso. One day, as Picasso is sitting in a cafe, a woman approaches and asks for a work of art. Picasso sketches something on a napkin. When he names his price, the woman is horrified. “That sketch took you 5 minutes!” she says. Picasso responds, “Lady, this sketch may have taken me five minutes, but it took me 50 years to learn how to draw like that!”
The story is probably apocryphal, but Dad makes his point. The works that you see in this exhibition were created over the last two and a half years, since ‘Renewal’, my father’s first solo exhibition in early 2022. And although Dad has only been painting regularly since the pandemic, he has been sketching as a daily practice for almost his entire life, and it has taken him 88 years to learn to make art like this.
The works are a product of all the experiences he has ever had: from his deprived childhood in war-time Singapore, to his lucky escape with a Colombo Plan Scholarship, his decades of practice as an architect in Malaysia — at first in obscurity and later celebrated — as well as his years as a sailor, art collector, businessman, traveller, husband, father. He still listens to the crooners, thinks every proper gentleman should have a personal valet, and, although he avidly consumes hours of videos on YouTube about the contemporary art world, the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s still hold an abiding fascination for him. I think if you look for them, you can see all these things in his work.
Another facet of his background is his fondness for quoting Shakespeare. Macbeth is one of his favourites. Looking at these works, the witch’s exhortation to “Be bloody, bold and resolute” comes to mind. My father has never been timid or hesitant. The exuberant energy of his artworks comes from a deep well of personal resilience. He cannot tell you what he is thinking about when he makes art, and by and large he doesn’t plan his works. They come to him spontaneously, when he has a brush in hand, paint pots at the ready.
And yet we see that his works have evolved significantly since his previous exhibition, although there are traces of the same preoccupations. The motifs of scallops and cross-hatching from his batik-inspired Canting series of 2022 return in the Isen-Isen works, but now more layered and deconstructed. The upward sweep of the Sanjung series recurs, with its familiar energetic rising action from bottom left to top right. The dominant black hieroglyphs of the Aksara series can also be detected, although now he often uses paler colours in his outlines, creating a more translucent lightness. And while the trenchant dark lines and primary colours of Imbangan Dinamik 1 are definitely characteristic, his own favourite artwork in this exhibition is Menganyam Nilam, a more delicate suggestion of gauzy strokes creating a sense of layered depth — but of course on a grand scale.
Although Dad is occasionally deeply immersed in his painting studio, his primary practice will always be architecture. If the opportunity presents itself, he would rather be working on a building than a painting. But we think that the practice of painting has given him a new lease of life and a new direction for his relentless desire to be at work. Through it, he finds a way to relate to the groups of architecture students who often visit Rimbun Dahan on school excursions. He urges them to study art as an avenue into architecture, and perhaps they can more easily understand the creative urge expressed as a sweep of paint on canvas, rather than in the laborious repetition and correction involved in designing a building.
Throughout my life, I have seldom seen my father without a notebook and a black Artline pen. Most of the time, every line on the page has been meant to symbolise a structure: a wall here, a window there, a roofline or a street. It must be liberating, I think, to make marks just for the sake of it, marks that refer to nothing but themselves. In his most recent works, Dad has been moving beyond the black outlines that gave structure to many of his earlier paintings. Black is now obscured by other colours, outlines are in white or blue, sometimes the lines disintegrate entirely. It’s a bold new world he’s moving towards, and he is not tired yet.
To be eligible for this residency, applicants must be BOTH citizens of AND residents of a Southeast Asian country. For the purposes of this application, the Southeast Asian countries are: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and including Timor Leste.
In case of doubt, please review the following examples.
Person A is a citizen of Thailand (a Southeast Asian country) and lives in Thailand. => Person A is eligible to apply.
Person B is a citizen of Thailand (a Southeast Asian country), but has been living for 15 years in the Philippines (another Southeast Asian country). => Person B is eligible to apply.
Person C is a citizen of Thailand, but has been living for 4 years in Australia (not a Southeast Asian country). => Person C is NOT eligible to apply.
Person D is a citizen of the USA (not a Southeast Asian country) and has been living for 7 years in Singapore (a Southeast Asian country). => Person D is NOT eligible to apply.
Person E is a citizen and resident of Taiwan/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka/Bhutan/Papua New Guinea (not Southeast Asian countries). => Person E is NOT eligible to apply.
Person F is a citizen of Malaysia and splits her time living between London and Malaysia. => A borderline case. Please contact us to discuss.
If you have questions or concerns about your eligibility, please contact arts@rimbundahan.org before you apply.
The reason that our residency eligibility is only for Southeast Asian citizens who also live in Southeast Asia is because we would like to reserve these opportunities for artists who are committed to being members of arts communities in our region, and artists in our region generally have far fewer opportunities than other artists who live in more developed countries.
We realize that this restriction may unfairly discriminate against some worthy applicants, and it is not intended to be a judgment on the quality of your art or your contribution to Southeast Asian arts communities. However, given that we are a family-run and family-funded organization with limited capacity, we have put in place this eligibility restriction to allow for the practical management of our application process.
In July 2024, Kieu-Anh Nguyen undertook one month of residency at Rimbun Dahan. Due to other visa challenges, her second month of residency has been postponed to 2025, but her studio will be open for Open Day on Sunday 25 August 2024, although she will not be present.
About the Artist
Kieu-Anh Nguyen (b. 1997) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Hanoi, Vietnam. She enjoys creating spaces to foster inclusive conversations around underrepresented bodies and narratives, notably about women.
Her art practice has foregrounded olfaction as the core line of inquiry to explore memory tracing and care practice, as it has taken the forms of participation and soft sculpture, and often suggests travels between time, spaces, and sensory experiences.
Her work has been exhibited in various spaces, including VIVA ExCon, Vietnamese Women’s Museum, Asia Art Archive and documenta fifteen.
About the Residency
Kieu-Anh has been immersed in inter-liminal spaces, either those given to her or those she created herself through her continuation of work and current exploration in the natural and cultural landscape of the residency.
During the first month of her residency, Kieu-Anh found belonging and familiarity in creating themed bouquets from collecting plants and found objects from the garden at Rimbun Dahan and from Hindu temples on Jalan Ipoh. She then narratively recorded the experiences to reexamine and study means of nativity in nature through the smell of flora and fungi in the garden — those that share similarities and differences with species in neighboring countries. The scented rituals in the Hindu temples, coming from a religion foreign to Kieu-Anh, brought her interest to a fictional discovery of a flawless faunt of protection that came to her in a dream.
When she is not walking around and smelling plants, she is probably in the studio, doing nails eternally — stretching the reality of time and other beings that she encounters on the tiny surfaces of nail replicas. The work experiments with traditional lacquer techniques, and explores “standards of beauty” in both lacquer craft and nail aesthetics. It captures organic encounters with people through a made-up service — “one Eternailty later” — continuing its first chapter from Berlin in May and June this year. At Rimbun Dahan, she has documented every encounter into little nail copies, scanning them onto fish scales found near the pool (thanks to the otter season!), and repeats it in her eternailty.
Ironically, while spending most of her headspace living and creating in a borderless world of scent and other means of counting time, Kieu-Anh is unfortunately absent for this Open Studio, not because it was her birthday, but due to an actual border problem. She has been forced to suspend her second month of residency. The flowers she has prepared have wilted, the milk-scented prayers need her presence to recharge their magic, so for now the open studio relies purely on the nail shop’s instruction to continue her residency project.
Please leave Kieu-Anh a copy of your nails, and pretend that we have actually met! Until Kieu-Anh returns to RD, let her take care of your nails in the meantime until you meet (again).
In August 2024, Filipina visual artist Noelle Varela spent one month in residency at Rimbun Dahan.
About the Artist
Noelle Varela (b. 1993) is a Filipina visual artist who studied and earned her degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines- Diliman. She mainly works with three-dimensional pieces and continuously constructs contemporary images using sawdust through flora and female imagery to depict female and women experiences, sensuality and societal standings.
Continuing my exploration around sawdust as textile during my residency, I delved into a more narrative imagery about finding familiarity — similar and the same, within a new environment to cope with the sense of place. There is a challenge for me to expand and allow myself to experience new places, to have myself familiarize and notice similarities between my home back in the Philippines and here in Malaysia has encouraged me to attain a sense of ease.
To establish one as ‘usual’, we ought to progressively obtain familiarity with the environment through routines, finding similarities and by building practical inhabitation around our surroundings. We tend to gravitate towards things and experiences that seem familiar to us, something we had experienced and played into beforehand to which our repetitive encounter with the unknown becomes familiar. There is a hand-in-hand relationship between our personal experiences and daily routines to the place itself. Our cognitive aligns with our intimate perception of reality — to be able to distinguish similar against ‘the same’ happenings. Activities revolving the practical use of the place and landscape afforded a sense of ease and belongingness.
For the Open Day, I will be showing a series of sawdust work and drawings in which both portray places and objects I interact with daily here in Rimbun Dahan. These images range from the path to and from my studio space and home, depictions of the daily routines I continued and imposed during my stay, familiar plants, interactions with the pets and areas in the house I inhabit with my usual doings. Places are experienced, new landscapes develop to “normal experiences” processed by the body and its senses.
From June to August 2024, Sabiq spent three months in residence at Rimbun Dahan.
About the Artist
Sabiq is a visual artist based in Bandung, Indonesia, born in Tasimalaya in 1994. His artistic practice explores the potential of sequential images across diverse mediums, including comic illustration, animation, code-generated art, and installation.
Typically, his main themes arise from the mundane, transforming everyday observations and experiences into visual narratives. His recent work focuses on the interplay between logic and aesthetics, seeking to find tension between these two seemingly disparate concepts.
At Rimbun Dahan, Sabiq tried to grow plants from the collection at Rimbun Dahan and observed them as they grew day by day. He took pictures of the plants almost every day.
During the residency, Sabiq continued his exploration of drawing with systems and nature as his main references. He sought to understand how nature grows and to imitate its processes using logical lines. He found it interesting because, while logic is often seen as stiff and rigid, nature is fluid and organic.
The main work he focused on during this residency was procedural animation. The animation had no traditional keyframes; instead, its movements were driven by instructions from a function, such as timeframe, randomness, noise, or oscillation. The values and parameters of the animation were based on the photos of the plants he took almost every day.
Malaysian filmmaker Gogularaajan Rajendran undertook a two-month residency at Rimbun Dahan from June to July 2024.
About the Artist
Gogu (Gogularaajan Rajendran) is a filmmaker based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He focuses on telling stories about Malaysian Indians, blending horror and humor through both provocative and poetic approaches. The short film “Walay Balay”, which he co-directed, premiered at the 2024 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. He received the Krishen Jit Fund for his ongoing project “Araro Ariraro”, documenting the stories of Malaysian Indian plantation workers. Gogu is also currently developing his first fiction feature film, “Kaali: Depth of Darkness”, which received the inaugural mylab FINAS Award and was featured at the 2021 Seapitch Bangkok and the 2022 Film Bazaar Co-Production Market in India.
Gogu developed his feature film project “Kaali” during a two-month residency at Rimbun Dahan. The peaceful and calm natural environment played a crucial role in helping him find the essence of the story and build its structure after conducting intensive research on how folklore, fairy tales, and myths can be translated into the medium of cinema. Below is the logline for the film, “Kaali”:
1966, a plantation bordering a lush forest in Malaysia. Kali (24) is a young wife and plantation worker of the Indian diaspora community who struggles with her mother-in-law Chellammal’s impatience to have an heir. She begins to feel accepted when she eventually gets pregnant, but a wrong decision triggers a miscarriage. Suddenly, Kali faces the wrath of Chellammal, who turns everyone against her. Left alone, Kali discovers her divine connection to the forest and uses it to take revenge.
Scenes from the Residency
Showing on Open Day, 25 August 2024
“Every day when I wake up, I open the window panels that overlook a beautiful pond filled with lotus flowers. This pond has become my best friend. I gaze into it, share my thoughts with it, and it returns some back to me. I observe it daily, noticing how it changes and connects with the people and animals around it. This is a love letter to the Rimbun Dahan lotus pond.”
Thai artist Naraphat Sakarthornsap is undertaking a one-month residency at Rimbun Dahan in August 2024.
About the Artist
Naraphat Sakarthornsap is a Bangkok-based artist whose work explores societal inequalities and gender discrimination through the medium of photography and installation. Flowers serve as central motifs in his practice, imbued with profound symbolic meaning. These floral elements function as keys to unlocking the complexities concealed within his work, often reflecting his personal and emotional depths. Naraphat’s early artistic inquiries focused on the ephemeral nature of flowers, mirroring a broader exploration of challenges imposed by the natural world. Over time, this interest evolved into a critique of societal power structures, as expressed through his floral imagery. His work invites viewers to look beyond the superficial beauty of his compositions and to contemplate the deeper messages embedded within them. In doing so, Naraphat’s work resonates with the experiences of many who grapple with societal norms and inequalities.
The complex visa application process and stringent document checks faced by many Asian citizens highlight the unequal treatment of people based on one’s country of origin as indicated on their passports. In a similar vein, the garden within Rimbun Dahan can be seen as a microcosm of a nation, where the gardener is the supreme ruler. Cultivated plants represent legal residents, coexisting with ‘outsiders’ such as grasses, weeds, and creepers whose seeds are carried by wind or animals. These uninvited plants strive to establish their presence and claim the right to exist within a space that isn’t their native habitat. Their presence creates conflicts within the garden’s ecosystem, sometimes competing for nutrients with the primary plants selected by the gardener, yet simultaneously demonstrating a desire to secure a place to survive.
The attempt to capture the individuality of these plants through black and white portraits against a white background is akin to passport photos that establish a clear identity, serving as a starting point for seeking residency. This is a way to affirm their existence and claim the right to live, even as unauthorized outsiders. However, the ultimate decision-making power rests with the gardener, leaving these plants vulnerable to expulsion or eradication. This raises questions about the circumstances of these plants’ existence as outsiders. Will they be granted the right to coexist with other living beings when all life seeks a better place to thrive?
A day of art and artists, in the 14-acre tropical greenery of Rimbun Dahan, 45 minutes from Kuala Lumpur.
On Sunday 25 August 2024, Rimbun Dahan will be open to the public, sharing new art works by our current resident artists: author Lim Wan Phing (Malaysia), filmmaker Gogularaajan Rajendran (Malaysia), visual artists Naraphat Sakarthornsap (Thailand), Sabiq Hibatulbaqi (Indonesia) and Noelle Varela (Philippines), and interdisciplinary artist Kiều-Anh Nguyễn (Viet Nam).
Free entry. Registration required for garden tour only (see below).
Schedule
9:00am-11:00am: Guided garden tour of our 14-acre native Southeast Asian arboretum and garden at Rimbun Dahan by Angela Hijjas. Meet at the front gate. Slots are limited, and registrations are required for the garden tour. Register here: https://forms.gle/C1e1d9jrzyPi57jX6
11:00am-1:30pm: Artists’ studios open to the public. Please visit and have a chat with the artist!
1:30-2:30pm: Lunch break; studios closed. You are welcome to bring your own picnic to enjoy in the garden; please take your rubbish with you.
2:30-6:00pm: Artists’ studios open to the public. Please visit and have a chat with the artist!
4-5:30pm: Sensorial Writing Workshop & Reading, by Lim Wan Phing [more info below].
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 wheelchair accessible venue.
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
Wan Phing Lim was born to Malaysian parents in 1986 in Butterworth, Penang. She lives in Penang and is the fiction editor of NutMag zine. Her first short story collection ‘Two Figures in a Car’ was published by Penguin SEA in 2021. Her second collection, ‘Adorable’ is forthcoming in 2025.
Naraphat Sakarthornsap is a Bangkok-based artist whose work explores societal inequalities and gender discrimination through the medium of photography and installation. Flowers serve as central motifs in his practice, imbued with profound symbolic meaning. These floral elements function as keys to unlocking the complexities concealed within his work, often reflecting his personal and emotional depths. Naraphat’s early artistic inquiries focused on the ephemeral nature of flowers, mirroring a broader exploration of challenges imposed by the natural world. Over time, this interest evolved into a critique of societal power structures, as expressed through his floral imagery. His work invites viewers to look beyond the superficial beauty of his compositions and to contemplate the deeper messages embedded within them. In doing so, Naraphat’s work resonates with the experiences of many who grapple with societal norms and inequalities.
Gogularaajan Rajendran is a filmmaker based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He focuses on telling stories about Malaysian Indians, blending horror and humor through both provocative and poetic approaches. The short film “Walay Balay”, which he co-directed, premiered at the 2024 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. He received the Krishen Jit Fund for his ongoing project “Araro Ariraro”, documenting the stories of Malaysian Indian plantation workers. Gogu is also currently developing his first fiction feature film, “Kaali: Depth of Darkness”, which received the inaugural mylab FINAS Award and was featured at the 2021 Seapitch Bangkok and the 2022 Film Bazaar Co-Production Market in India.
Sabiq Hibatulbaqi is a visual artist based in Bandung, Indonesia, born in Tasimalaya in 1994. His artistic practice explores the potential of sequential images across diverse mediums, including comic illustration, animation, code-generated art, and installation. Typically, his main themes arise from the mundane, transforming everyday observations and experiences into visual narratives. His recent work focuses on the interplay between logic and aesthetics, seeking to find tension between these two seemingly disparate concepts.
Noelle Varela (b. 1993) is a Filipina visual artist who studied and earned her degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines- Diliman. She mainly works with three-dimensional pieces and continuously constructs contemporary images using sawdust through flora and female imagery to depict female and women experiences, sensuality and societal standings.
Kieu-Anh Nguyen (b. 1997) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Hanoi, Vietnam. She enjoys creating spaces to foster inclusive conversations around underrepresented bodies and narratives, notably about women. Her art practice has foregrounded olfaction as the core line of inquiry to explore memory tracing and care practice, as it has taken the forms of participation and soft sculpture, and often suggests travels between time, spaces, and sensory experiences. Her work has been exhibited in various spaces, including VIVA ExCon, Vietnamese Women’s Museum, Asia Art Archive and documenta fifteen.
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.
Malaysian writer Lim Wan Phing is in residence at Rimbun Dahan for 3 months from July to September 2024.
About the Author
Wan Phing Lim was born to Malaysian parents in 1986 in Butterworth, Penang. She lives in Penang and is the fiction editor of NutMag zine. Her first short story collection ‘Two Figures in a Car’ was published by Penguin SEA in 2021. Her second collection, ‘Adorable’ is forthcoming in 2025.
About the Residency
Wan Phing is working on her third short story collection. The plong trees found in Rimbun Dahan have inspired her first piece, entitled ‘Spirit of the Plong’. It has been completed, workshopped and submitted to speculative fiction magazines online. Her current work-in-progress is another short story, tentatively titled ‘Paris’, inspired by the moulded and woven sculptures created by Kristi Chen, a recent resident artist, from Canada.
4-5:30pm in the Dance Studio at Rimbun Dahan, Sunday 25 August 2024
Engage with the senses as you participate in short, guided writing exercises, inspired by the nature and architecture of Rimbun Dahan. Describe sights, sounds, smells, touch and taste using clear, vivid and imaginative prose as we find inspiration in our immediate surroundings. Wan Phing will read from her own current works created at Rimbun Dahan.
Bring your own pen, notebook, or write on your phone or tablet. Pen and paper will be provided just in case. Free entry, just show up, no need to register.
