MARC STRAUS

Anne Samat (b. 1973, Malaysia), employs the South East Asian art of Pua Kumbu weaving, which she formally studied. She adds humble household goods from 99 cent stores to construct totemic wall sculptures.

They are brightly colored and gorgeous works, heavily adorned with details, each one resonating as an avatar or altar. The work emanates from her feelings about family, identities and the means by which they can be portrayed, freedoms and lack thereof, and more recently the ways in which COVID-19 has altered her life.

Just as the search for self is a long and winding process for humanity, her sculptures do not reveal their underpinnings easily. Yet each work is foundationally unique; they each have their own narrative embedded. They are about love, individuality, and liberation. All works in the show were created recently on the gallery’s fourth floor.

Samat graduated from the Mara Institute of Technology in Malaysia with a bachelor’s degree in textile design with an emphasis on weaving and minor in resist print technique. She has shown extensively in South East Asia, most recently in an exhibition entitled Stories We Scare Ourselves With at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taiwan (2019), Elevation Laos, Vientiane, Laos and the Yokohama Triennale in Japan (2017). In 2018, she had an exhibition at Cestfossel Kunstlaboratorium in Norway, and in 2019, a residency and museum show at Hudson Valley MoCA in New York. Her work was featured in a major installation at the 2020 Asia Society Triennial in New York City, and a solo booth at The Armory Show 2020.

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