Ahmad Zakii Anwar trained as a graphic designer and spent his early career in advertising, which is where his precision comes from. He is one of the most influential figurative artists in Malaysia, known for a photo-realist technique applied to still lifes and solitary figures. What separates him from other realists is what he reads into the work: he draws on Sufi mysticism and Plato, and borrows a phrase from the medieval Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi, "uniting the contraries", to describe what he is after. Kota Sunyi means Silent City in Malay, and it was the title work of his 2007 Jakarta solo show. The series is one of his most iconic themes, figures move through an empty colonnaded hall that looks like a colonial-era warehouse, lit by a row of arched windows. The emptiness is deliberate. Zakii often strips a city of its crowds to make it feel still and dreamlike, a quality he returns to across much of his work.