Identity can evolve and adapt itself according to people’s needs and behaviours. People tend to be sentimental or nostalgic about their past and misperceive changing identity as diminishing or lost identity.

My work is developed from my notion of the warrior dance of Sarawak (Malaysia) where I was born. Over the years, I have noticed gradual changes within many local things – traditional crafts with additional foreign elements, traditional songs affected by modern Jazz, traditional ornaments influenced by imported designs and the gradual transformation of the warrior dance amongst the most noticeable.
This work serves as my personal response to the transition of traditional ways of life towards modern lifestyles as a result of development. Formalistically, all the subjects and objects in the painting (the warriors dancers, their costumes, ornaments, headgear etc) are deliberately transformed and become non-representational nor pure abstract. This allows the viewer to ponder and discover forms or objects and hence, meanings. Such transformation has inevitably resulted in reducing the degree of their recognition but on the other hand gives new looks and characters. This phenomenon is often referred to as loss of identity. In my work, the confirmation of vibrant strokes and multilayers of vivid colour is intended to reflect the ever changing world due to modernisation.
As a whole, my work symbolises the nature of evolution that changes the aesthetics and characters of things and ultimately the behaviour of people. So identity has become the cause of concern. To me, it is evolving. My work stresses this point.

Such an evolving entity can only be expressed, visually, through colour, brush stroke and semi-abstract shapes. Identity does not necessarily clash with progress and globalisation. Identity can evolve and adapt itself according to people’s needs and behaviours. People tend to be sentimental or nostalgic about their past and misperceive changing identity as diminishing or lost identity.