Description
It's tough for one so young to carry a globe, signifying the world and what a hazy, uncertain and parlous one at that, on one's head, though the well-endowed girl seems capable despite the grimace. The gender specific is no accident, the female always signifying Mother Nature and the hand of nurture and a heart of love, and of course, the reproductive quality which is about continuity and perpetuity. Too much that the Earth is blessed with, are gone or sullied by deforestation, pollution, overdevelopment and other perils. The destructive forces of climate change are very real today, and this environment-skewed work by Ahmad Fuad Osman in 1997 is a most sobering warning.
Ahmad Fuad Osman, one of the members of the legendary Matahati collective, now disbanded, is an artist not restricted by media or style. "Art is something transient, that cannot be set in black and white, cemented in, or immutable. Apart from my moral and religious uphold, I have never set any limitations or boundaries in the pursuit of creating art. I do not believe in single thought process, style, medium or material over another," he had intoned. He was one of the three Jurors Awards in the APB Foundation Signature Art Prize in Singapore in 2008, for the work, Recollections Of Long Lost Memories. He won the Juror's Choice Award in the Malaysian level of the Asean Art Award in 2000 and 2003. He had been selected for biennales in Singapore (2006-2007), Shahjah and residences in Vermont (2004), Goyang (2005-2006) and Rimbun Dahan (2007-2008). He graduated with a BFA from Mara Institute of Technology (now a university) in 1987. Since 2010, he travels between Bali and Kuala Lumpur. His solo exhibition, At The End Of The Day Even Art Is Not Important (1990-2019) was held at National Art Gallery Malaysia from October 2019 to February 2020.