It's literal to assign the year, 1992, to Latiff Mohidin's Gelombang Series, yet given Latiff's peripatetic physical placements, and being a regionally acclaimed poet, the composition, and spirit, can be related more to the meanderings of the mind, of memories, impressions and imagination, of the creative moment. Here, what looks like a sheet music, slanted slightly right in a conventional left-to-right reading of the Latin alphabet, all with its own resonant melody, rhythm and harmony, whatever the artist's habit. Is that a distraction, a detour even? Is it a shred of musicology or literally, an unsteady contraption that is bleak, fragile and lyrical. One can never know, and one suspects too, the artist, left with his own happy conundrum. Latiff Mohidin is a national art treasure, excelling in paint, pen (poetry and translation), print (printmaking), and sculpture. He is adept at three languages - Malay, German and English. His wanderings around Southeast Asia led to his iconic Pago-Pago series (1960-1969), which headlined the mega three-month exhibition held at the prestigious Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2018 (helmed by the National Gallery Singapore). Latiff was awarded a major Retrospective at the National Art Gallery Malaysia from December 2012 to June 2013, his second. His art studies were at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in West Berlin. He won the John D. Rockefeller III Fellowship to study at Pratt Institute in New York, and the French scholarship to study printmaking at the Atelier Lacouriere-Frelaut in Paris. He also won 2nd Prize (Graphics) in the 1968 Salon Malaysia. In literature, he won the SEA Write Award twice (1984 and 1986) and the Malaysian Literary Awards from 1972 to 1976, and he was also appointed Guest Writer at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in 1988.