Anak Alam at 50: How a Collective Helped Shape Malaysian Contemporary Art

At HARTA Space, the gallery by Malaysia’s premier jeweller Habib, Anak Alam 50 Tahun (1974–2024) is a rare commemorative exhibition marking five decades since one of Malaysia’s most influential artist collectives took shape.

In 1974, a group of Malaysian creatives came together with no membership forms, no hierarchy and no fixed doctrine. They called themselves Anak Alam—“Children of Nature”—and built a community of harmonious coexistence, where nature, imagination, experimentation and interdisciplinary creativity were celebrated. Many of these painters, writers, sculptors, printmakers, actors and musicians would later become established in their respective fields.

Its core members lived and worked communally until the building was reclaimed in the 1980s, though their bonds and the occasional joint exhibition endured for decades after. The chronological curation of this show underscores that historical heft, featuring many works rarely seen in public, on loan from the private collections of the artists’ families, Henry Butcher and Universiti Malaya.

At the preview, an easy intimacy of shared history among surviving members of Anak Alam, alongside the families of those who have passed, enlivens the room. Brought together through the research and curation of Faizal Sidik, who co-published a book marking the group’s 50th anniversary two years earlier, the exhibition highlights works from 12 artists spanning the 1960s to the 2020s. An invaluable archival section of original letters, posters, photographs, catalogues and other ephemera completes this visual and archival portrait of the collective.

It’s best to begin with the early works of Latiff Mohidin, Anak Alam’s main driving force and, in time, one of Malaysia’s leading modern artists. Two works from his transformative Pago-Pago series, made across the 1960s during his travels in Southeast Asia, open the dialogue. In them, Latiff lays the groundwork for a visual language that would help craft the vocabulary of Southeast Asian modernism, and prefigure the manifesto he later wrote for Anak Alam itself. 

Right beside hangs an unassuming set of ink drawings by Zulkifli Dahlan, whose larger socially critical works would establish him as one of the most radical figures in Malaysian modern art. Made when he was just eighteen, their hybrid, amoebic forms, rendered in fluid black linework, already reveal the surrealist precocity of an artist whose career would be tragically brief. 

The restless energy of the collective lives on in Abdul Ghafar Ibrahim, known affectionately as Agi, still radiating a playful freedom in his 80s. Four monumental text-based works, Hello, Wow, Ter Bang and Rumput/Grass, made between 1974 and 1977, represent the culmination of his Tri-V Poetry, verbal, vocal and visual, dissolving the boundary between language and geometry and reaffirming his early contribution to experimental and conceptual art in Malaysia.

Elsewhere, the prints of Abdul Mansoor Ibrahim demonstrate his experiments with the viscosity technique learnt from Atelier 17 in Paris, placing him at the vanguard of modern printmaking in Malaysia. 

The collective’s embrace of different forms extended into sculpture. Mad Anuar Ismail’s Pemain Rebab and Siri Pahlawan – Anak Bugis (2006) celebrate identity and heritage, honouring his pivotal role in introducing sculpture within the group’s activities. 

A suite of works by Yusof Gajah traces his distinctive elephant motif. A children’s book illustrator as much as a painter, he forged one of the most consistent visual identities in Malaysian art, becoming one of the country’s most recognisable naïve artists. 

Founding member Mustapa Hj Ibrahim’s paintings and sculptures, mostly from the 1980s, trace nature’s inner vitality through his Gejolak works, turning to abstract, organic forms to evoke its pulse and endless capacity for transformation. He spent decades defending Anak Alam’s spirit and keeping its exhibitions alive. 

The exhibition is equally significant for bringing renewed attention to its women artists, at a time when the wider art scene offered them little space. Mustapa’s wife, Maryam Abdullah, played a central role in managing the collective alongside him; Mencari Rezeki Di Celah Kehidupan (1975) was retained in her personal collection for years, now being shown publicly for the first time. Poet, painter, writer, and cultural researcher, Siti Zainon Ismail’s involvement pushed Anak Alam’s cross-disciplinary pulse far beyond the canvas. 

The collective impact is a vivid reminder of the roots from which Malaysian contemporary art has grown. Across five decades, organic and fluid forms recur. Works speak to one another across generations through a shared spirit of experimentation, play and exchange. Nature is a pervasive language here, mirroring inner experience while questioning our relationship with the world around us.

To consider Malaysia’s contemporary art identity today is to honour the often-forgotten ecosystem that nurtured it: one shaped by openness across cultures, disciplines, and ideas, and sustained by collaboration. In an increasingly fragmented world, the values of Anak Alam feel more relevant than ever. 

Anak Alam 50 Tahun (1974–2024), curated by Faizal Sidik and featuring Latiff Mohidin, Mustapa Hj Ibrahim, Ali Mabuha Rahamad, Zulkifli Dahlan, Maryam Abdullah, Siti Zainon Ismail, Ismail Abdullah, Abdul Ghafar Ibrahim, Yusof Gajah, Mad Anuar Ismail, Abdul Mansoor Ibrahim and Mazlan Noor, is now on at HARTA, Ampang, until 31 August 2026. 

Cover image: Ismail Abdullah, Kemuluran I, 1975. Oil on canvas, 84 × 24 cm. An early study for Abdullah’s Elasticity series, the work reflects his formal experimentation and contribution to the development of Malaysian abstract art.