An air of angst pervades among the six EggHeads in the drab brown carton, with just enough space for social distancing. The glum looks among the egg-aggerated caricatures are no surprise, given the Covid-19 pandemic with its protracted enforced incarceration and isolation on pain of fine. The work of painted eggshells can be read on several levels: ennui behind the Keluarga Bahagia (Happy Family) façade, or little tension or cracks emerging when the family members are virtually strapped together, and the utter unspeakable boredom of pacing the parameters of one’s abode. This work by Samsudin Wahab was from a group show called Mending Fence Tales From An Isolation in 2020. It brought together 41 artists not only from Malaysia, but also those from Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Had this work been done after the new government of Dato' Sri Ismail Sabri with its mantra of Keluarga Malaysia in August 2021, it could have elicited more insinuations. Samsudin Wahab won the hugely coveted Major Award in the 2019 Bakat Muda Sezaman (Young Contemporary Artists) competition, after a 2013 Juror’s Prize. He won the Malaysian Emerging Artist Award in 2009, the year he was chosen resident-artist at Rimbun Dahan. His other notable awards were 2nd Prize in Goethe-Institut’s Salon Meets Art (2007) and a Consolation Prize in the Tanjung Heritage competition (2005). He also had residencies in India (2010) and with HOM (2008). A co-founder of the printmaking collective, Cetak Kolektif, he studied for his BFA at the Mara Institute of Technology in 2007.