An An In Waiting illustrates a young girl immaculately dressed, seated on a pink and white Renaissance-style armchair with her legs folded to one side while holding a mousedeer on her lap. A miniature portrait of a man is depicted on the head of the armchair above her. The room she is in is decorated with white and pastel blue-green base Damask themed wallpaper depicting the hibiscus flower, a nationalist emblem and black and gold diamond-tiled floor with a crocodile beneath the armchair. Based on Hikayat Sang Kancil dan Buaya, an animation released by Filem Negara Malaysia in 1983, this piece is represented by metaphors linking the traditional folklore with contemporary socio-political context. In an essay accompanying Shia Yih Yiing’s solo exhibition The Weaver (2014), Simon Soon reveals the significance of the mousedeer, which is a recurring character that complements An An, the artist’s middle child in most of her paintings: “If we think of Sang Kancil as a totem, the mousedeer’s re-emergence in popular television resonates with Yih Yiing’s interest in choosing the mousedeer as a protective figure to accompany her daughter in a number of her paintings. Yih Yiing in personal interviews have expressed her regret that she was not able to tell these stories to her children when they were younger, and felt that her paintings would be able to recover the experience of transmitting this oral tradition to the next generation.” Shia Yih Yiing was educated at the Malaysian Institute of Art and holds a Masters in Fine Art from the University of Western Sydney. She held her first solo Homage to Ordinary Life at the Creative Centre, Kuala Lumpur in 1998. She won the Kontena Nasional’s Rural Malaysia Award in 1993 and a Minor Award in the Young Contemporary Artists exhibition in 1994. She was selected for the ASEAN Visual Art Education Workshop in Mandalayong, the Philippines in 1994, and the Commonwealth Fellowship in Arts And Crafts in New South Wales, Australia in 1999. She was an Alternate Artist in the Vermont Studio Center Fremont Fellowship in 2007. Since 1989, her works have also been included in a number of group exhibitions. Among her solo exhibitions are wOm(b) at Galeri Petronas (2004), The Weaver, White Box, Publika, Kuala Lumpur (2013), Shia Yih Yiing: Telling Tales, Chan Hampe Gallery, Singapore (2014), and more. She is a member of the figurative art collective The F Klub whose works were featured in an exhibition titled Being Human — Figuratism of Sixteen Malaysian Painters at Art Stage Singapore in 2015. Her works form part of major collections that include Galeri Petronas, HSBC Bank Berhad and the National Visual Arts Gallery, Kuala Lumpur.