NOOR MAHNUN

Yeo Workshop is proud to announce the Singapore debut solo exhibition of acclaimed Malaysian artist Noor Mahnun, also known as Anum. This landmark presentation coincides with the 40th anniversary of her first exhibition at Video Diva, an artist-run space in Florence, Italy, in 1985. For both the artist and the gallery, this exhibition marks a pivotal chapter in the unfolding story of Southeast Asian contemporary art — one that foregrounds the nuanced contributions of women artists whose practices have long developed outside the spotlight, yet resonate with remarkable clarity and relevance today.

Anum’s work — deeply personal, technically rigorous, and quietly subversive — straddles still life and figurative painting. Her oil-on-canvas compositions are marked by a delicate visual precision that elevates the everyday. With a distinctive aesthetic language shaped by her architectural training and European art education, Anum draws viewers into slow contemplation. Each canvas fuses narrative nuance with psychological subtlety, offering a compelling meditation on memory, place, and material culture.

Known for her refined, disciplined approach to painting, Anum imbues the mundane with quiet vitality. Her palette and compositional logic reference not only the domestic and the familiar, but also the geographies that have shaped her life — from Kelantan and Kuala Lumpur to Florence and Braunschweig. Her most recent works reflect a return to the east coast of Malaysia, incorporating elements of local topography, shoreline, architecture, and regional symbolism into her visual lexicon.

Anum’s works, while modest in scale, are conceptually rich — often characterized by a sense of psychological interiority and a dry wit. This exhibition, a first solo outside Malaysia in four decades, offers global collectors and curators a rare opportunity to engage with an artist whose introspective oeuvre is only now gaining international recognition.

Keoy Wan Hui

Read full Press Release here.