Image Credit - Asia Society
Contemporary Malaysian artist Anne Samat uses techniques from Southeast Asian weaving and textile arts to create her vibrant and totemic pieces. Samat produces technically challenging and visually stunning sculpted wall reliefs and anthropomorphic sculptures that engage with gender and identity concerns, transcending the conventions and normative standards of conventional weaving. A wide variety of commonplace objects, typically daily objects found in homes like colanders, combs, and rakes, are incorporated by the artist to break up the weave's lines and patterns. Her choice of these items aligns with the highly intimate and autobiographical nature of her artworks. The hierarchical Euro-American conceptions of art and craft that frequently discredit non-Western artisanal activities are challenged by Samat's work.
Her pieces convey love, independence, and emancipation while emanating from personal experiences of family and identity. For Samat, it is crucial to live out what one feels from within, without restraint or fear. Each one of her pieces resonate as an avatar and is vividly coloured and lavishly decorated. The sculptures are totems to various family members, with the pieces symbolizing personal stories. Handmade ropes dangle from the rakes' radiating armatures. Random objects are turned formal, cultural, and figurative. Forks and spoons act as a warp, a pair of plastic funnels double as breasts, and cassette tapes are hung from 80s-style neckpieces that resemble chains. Samat's elaborate weavings are expertly combined with common objects and cultural symbols to create a mythology for the family that transcends space and time.
The University of Wyoming Art Gallery hosted her first solo museum exhibition in the United States in 2022. She participated in the 2020 New York Asia Society Triennial, and in 2019 she completed a residency at the Hudson Valley MOCA. In 2023, she will present a solo exhibition at MASS MoCA and the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech. Her work is included in numerous private and public galleries across the world, including the Hudson Valley MOCA in Peekskill, New York; the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; the Singapore Art Museum (SAM); the KADIST Art Collection in Paris, France; and San Francisco, California.