MASNOOR RAMLI MAHMUD

Moulding The History, 2014

At my dining room, we have this piece which depicts Xi Jinping and Barack Obama contemplating the South China Sea from the shores of Malaysia’s east coast by senior contemporary artist Masnoor, who’s from the Matahati art movement. He shares the experience of his fellow artists from the art group, growing up in a period of great flux which has developed a lot of deep thought. His work here is a simple landscape where the two world figures were painted in 2014 when MH370 disappeared – and it marks the moment of the US’s pivot to Asia.