Few would have guessed that this is an early work, a rare canvas school assignment of metal-parts sculptor Raja Shahriman Raja Aziddin. The bony thin-flesh protuberances of the ‘lembut’ (soft) figure has elongated limbs and torso, to exaggerate the frail emaciated frame. Man is reduced to a crumpled mass, collapsing in what looks like a cold corridor. Why is Man weak, or depicted so? Could this be the genesis of his silat figures, which are however, steady, strong and confident? Raja Shahriman’s works cover the spectrum of Nature, Religion and Culture, and are all rooted in Malayness, first captured the imagination with his Killing Tools (1994) in the Killing Tools, Lalang and Warbox exhibition. He used metal scraps for linear anatomical constructs. He had his first solo, Gerak Tempur, in 1996. He enrolled as a Painting major at the Mara Institute of Technology but switched to Sculpture in the fifth semester, graduating in 1990. In 1994, after three years of teaching at the Malaysian Institute of Art (MIA), he returned to his hometown Kuala Kangsar. He was honoured with a solo show at the prestigious Galeri Petronas few years back.