Studing lying down on a hard surface is hardly the best recipe to prepare for examinations, as one tends to doze off into ‘dreamland.’ All I Have to Do Is Dream, the song by the Everly Brothers, will probably play in the head like some kind of opiated lullaby. There is the sense of abandon, and even sensuality, in Fadilah Karim’s image of a girl in a satin nightie, but the sequential tilt – either way – is not that of her subject suffering from the usual vertigo effects of high anxiety and physical discomfort. The feminine touches in the dress, pillow and skin tones contrast with the hard facts which the girl has to digest from the stack of opened hard-cover books probably for cross-referencing. There seems to be some kind of ritual coquetry, from the pose of being lost in thought while lying down, to arching the body to look behind and sitting up with knees to chest, and transfixing the viewer with her gaze as she tilts her face, as if challenging… Fadilah Karim graduated with a Masters in Fine Art, Majoring in Painting, at the UiTM (University Mara Institute of Technology), Jalan Othman, Petaling Jaya, in 2013, a Bachelor’s in 2010, and a diploma from the UiTM Malacca in 2008. She was a winner in the Portrait of the Governor of Malacca competition and a runner-up in the Tanjung Heritage competition. In 2008, she won the Incentive Award in the Shah Alam Open Show. She was among 16 top Malaysian figurative artists featured in a special exhibition in Art Stage Singapore 2015. She had her first solo, Vague, at the Pace Gallery (now Nadine Fine Arts) in 2012, followed by Secret Lies at Taksu Gallery, KL, in 2016. In 2014, she had a two-women show with the Philippines’ Guenivere Decena at HOM Art Trans, KL.