Martha Atienza, Our Islands,11°16’58.4_N 123°45’07.0_E, 2016–ongoing. Image courtesy of the artist and Silverlens (Manila/New York).
Southeast Asia has never been a region easily contained by a single definition. Its histories, cultures, politics and ecologies overlap, diverge and continually reshape one another. A new institution in Kuala Lumpur is now taking that complexity as its starting point.
Opening on 1 November 2026, Muara Arts will launch as a new not-for-profit institution dedicated to modern and contemporary art from Malaysia and Southeast Asia. Established under the auspices of the Creador Foundation, the institution marks a significant addition to Malaysia’s cultural landscape and will open with an ambitious inaugural exhibition, A–Z of Southeast Asian Art: A Critical Dictionary.
Bringing together more than 40 artists, the exhibition considers the region through painting, sculpture, textiles, installation, video and works on paper. Its organising principle comes from Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s ongoing project The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, first initiated in 2017.
Southeast Asia’s New Creative Space
The Far Side of Apo Island, courtesy of Tina Kim Gallery and Pacita Abad Art Estate; photo: Hyunjung Rhee.
Rather than attempting to define Southeast Asia, the exhibition uses a series of terms as points of departure. Each letter of the English alphabet is represented by between one and three works. This creates an interconnected sequence of ideas spanning culture, history, geography, ecology and politics.
The journey begins with A for Animism and A for Archipelago, featuring works by Zarina Muhammad and Martha Atienza, before moving through B for Buffalo, represented by Nadiah Bamadhaj and Marcos Kueh, and C for Corruption, with a new sculptural work by Pio Abad and Frances Wadsworth Jones. At the other end of the alphabet, Z for Zoomorphism is represented by Paul Pfeiffer’s Live Evil (Kuala Lumpur).
The resulting exhibition is deliberately expansive. Rather than presenting Southeast Asian art as a fixed category, it offers a network of perspectives through which visitors can consider how the region’s identity is constructed, contested and continually reimagined.
An Exhibition As Experiment
Balancing on the Weight of the Unresolved © Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn. Courtesy of the artist and NORR COHAN, New York; photo: Dan Bradica.
The curatorial framework is itself part of the experiment. Drawing on Ho’s use of alphabetical structures, alliteration and repetition, the exhibition applies a set of parameters to generate unexpected connections between artists and ideas.
Lydia Yee describes A–Z of Southeast Asian Art as simultaneously an introduction to contemporary art from the region. It represents a collection of works engaging with key questions as well as a curatorial experiment.
At its centre is the influence of Ho’s The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, an evolving project that treats the region not as a geographical certainty but as something continually produced through language, culture and imagination.
Khaek Pai Krai Ma 3, courtesy of the artist; photo: Marco Vedana for Kunstverein Ludwigshafen.
“For me, this is how a work or a project remains alive: through new uses, new contexts and new transformations,” says Ho Tzu Nyen. “Through being adapted and reactivated in ways that make sense for the world we are living in.”
Promoting Regional Art
That idea feels particularly apt for Muara Arts itself. As a new institution entering an increasingly active regional art ecosystem, its inaugural exhibition is less a declaration of what Southeast Asian art is than an invitation to reconsider how it might be understood.
Khaek Pai Krai Ma 3, courtesy of Navin Production (studiOK).
With its focus on artists and ideas from across the region, Muara Arts arrives at a moment when Southeast Asian contemporary art is receiving increasing international attention. Its ambition, however, is distinctly local: to create a space in Malaysia where the region’s artistic histories and contemporary practices can be encountered on their own terms.
A–Z of Southeast Asian Art: A Critical Dictionary opens at Muara Arts, Kuala Lumpur, on 1 November 2026.
