ILHAM Gallery

ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Rahel Joseph, Gallery Director

How have you been exhibiting art or working with artists in the past year?

It has been a difficult year as ILHAM was closed for nearly six of the past 12 months. Despite this, we opened two exhibitions ‘Bayangnya itu Timbul Tenggelam: Photographic Cultures in Malaysia’ and ‘Homebody : Finalists from the ILHAM Kids “MCO” Art Competition’. As physical public programming was not feasible during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period, we turned to digital programming to feature artist conversations and artist takeovers, curatorial tours and interviews. We also organised our first 360-degree virtual reality tour of our exhibitions so the public could access the shows during the lockdown. We felt it was important to support artists during this period. We invited Malaysian contemporary artists to do an Instagram take-over every weekend to share their work and practise with a larger public audience. The artists featured included Sharon Chin, Pangrok Sulap, Justin Lim, Haffendi Anuar, Haslin Ismail, and Yim Yen Sum, among others. In November 2020, we launched ILHAM Cribs, where we featured a weekly visit to an emerging artist’s studio, where they were invited to speak about their practice. These were filmed either by the gallery team or by the artists themselves, and posted on our social media, and each artist received a small per diem.

How has your role as a gallery this evolved since the pandemic?

When the first MCO happened in March 2020, my team and I had to immediately think of strategies to connect with our community at a time when our physical gallery was closed. We implemented our ILHAM@Home initiative, bringing public and education programming online. By going digital, we have been able to connect to audiences all over the country, as well as internationally, and that has been exciting. It has helped to make us more accessible, connecting to

people beyond the small, art-going Klang Valley circle. In the past, our social media accounts were primarily to promote in-gallery public programmes, which were designed to be in-person experiences. Now, we are programming for a digital audience and using our social media platform as an educational tool. We have curatorial tours, artist interviews, as well as a weekly series where we look more closely at a particular painting or photograph in the exhibition. If we are thoughtful in our approach, we can make the online space meaningful.

What is a favourite artwork or event from the past year?

‘Daddy and Us’ by Embun Jameela binti Mohd Ridzwan, age 7. Image courtesy of ILHAM Gallery.

We held an ILHAM Kids ‘MCO’ Art Competition, inviting kids from the ages of four to 12 to submit an artwork that illustrated family life under lockdown. The idea was to continue engaging with families and to also offer kids a creative outlet. We received over 120 entries and we included 34 as part of the ‘Homebody’ exhibition. I believe these artworks will be an important archive that shows how the COVID pandemic has affected families, particularly young kids.