A moment innocuous enough between two political luminaries, Tunku Abdul Rahman and (Tun) Hussein Onn, two former prime ministers but their status then nor occasion or date are not known. Independence Father Tunku, in side profile, is helping Hussein light a cigarette as he puffs for the incipient smoke, his hands clasping and cradling the Tunku’s outstretched hand like a shield. There is a palpable warmth between the two Umno leaders, but is there more to it than a smoking respite perhaps, was anything of great political portent discussed or is this just a warm-up to whatever that is to come. With the author Fuad Osman’s experience in film and theatre productions, he sets a film noir mood by using a photography veneer for some false authenticity and certainly a nostalgic mood, like maybe a Kurosawa flick set in modern-day, and certainly a precursor to Fuad’s 2009 Recollections Of The Long Lost Memories series. “History is false memory,” as he had intoned. Ahmad Fuad Osman, one of the nation’s most prominent experimental artists, became an international sensation when four of his works in his mid-career survey exhibition, At The End Of The Day Even Art is Not Important, were removed by and from the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, in February 2020, two months into the exhibition. The exhibition bolstered Fuad’s position as leading contemporary artist in Malaysia. Fuad was one of the members from the cult Matahati artist’s cooperative. Educated at the Mara Institutue of Technology (1991), he won acclaim when his work won one of the three Juror’s Award in the APB Signature Art Prize in Singapore in 2008. He also won the Malaysian component of the Philip Morris Asean Art Awards in 2000 and 2003. Fuad had residencies at Rimbun Dahan, Selangor (2007-2008), Goyang Art Studio, South Korea (2005-2006) and the Vermont Studio Centre, United States (2004).