Homo sapiens sapiens (carp motifs) 03 Sculpture

Desmond Mah is a neurodivergent Chinese-Australian artist born in Singapore who resides and creates in Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia), located on the unceded land of the Wadjak boodjar. He holds a BA (Hons) in Painting from Loughborough University in the UK and worked in art education before pursuing his career as an artist. Mah's childhood experiences in Singapore, where he was exposed to Taoist temple culture through his maternal grandmother, have had a significant impact on his art. The temple art featuring the monstrous, the grotesque and the macabre fascinates him. He migrated to Perth in the late 1980s with his father and encountered challenges as an Asian minority in a culturally different environment. These experiences and challenges have not only influenced Mah's perspective and creative vision, but also prepared him to overcome fear. In 2019, Mah almost lost a family member to suicide. Since then, the family member has been diagnosed with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). As it turns out, the family member is neurodivergent, which has helped Mah understand his own struggles with anxiety throughout his life. Although Mah is also neurodivergent, he does not explicitly address his disability in his practice. Instead, he utilises his neurological sensory overload mind into his works, developing a hybrid technique that combines painting and sculpture. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mah created a new embodiment of the body by combining his mark-making painting with Taoist paper effigy techniques, resulting in a grotesque hybrid form. However, this alone does not satisfy his mind. He integrates programming, mechanisms, and even smells to apply a multi-sensory dimension to his works. Mah has received awards for his paintings from various art prizes, including the E.SUN Bank Special Selection prize (Taiwan, 2022) and the Southern Buoy Studios Portrait Prize (Australia, 2021). He has exhibited in solo and group shows in Perth, Sydney and Beijing. He has also participated in residencies such as the Red Gate Residency (Beijing, 2018) where he was mentored by contemporary performance artist, He Yunchang (何云昌), researching the embodiment of the body. He has received various grants and commissions, and has an artwork in the private collection of Judith Neilson. In 2023, Mah will be participating in multiple artistic endeavours.