Ali Rahamad @ Mabuha

Born: 1952, Muar, Johor, Malaysia.
1973-1975, Amsterdam, Holland.
1975-1985, Munich, Germany.
1986-2007, Los Angeles, U.S.A.
At this moment living in Los Angeles, U.S.A.

ALI BIN RAHAMAD: PRIVATE VISIONS OF PUBLIC EVENTS

Oh, What a tangled web we weave
Sir Walter Scott

Ali Rahamad, native of Malaysia and citizen of the world, wends his way through the complexities and conflicts of the modern world with labyrinthine skeins of pigment. Emerging from a humble village of rubber tappers, he displayed precocious artistic gifts, carving novel wood and stone sculptures even before adolescence. Rubber tappers typically use a sharp knife to cut a slice of the bark to tap the raw liquid, and the frequent sight of the workers slicing and carving through the trees may well have inspired Ali to approach wood in a more loving and creative way. Alis art has always been predicated on the urgent need for a healing of the injured environment and its human fallout.
After finishing high school, Ali decided to pursue a career in the arts and left his village for Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. At the Angkatan Pelukis Samananjong (Association of artists of the Peninsula of Malaysia) in Kuala ...

ALI MABUHA (ALI RAHAMAD): PRIVATE VISIONS OF PUBLIC EVENTS

Ali Rahamad, native of Malaysia and citizen of the world, wends his way through the complexities and conflicts of the modern world with labyrinthine skeins of pigment. Emerging from a humble village of rubber tappers, he displayed precocious artistic gifts, carving novel wood and stone sculptures even before adolescence.
Ali’s art has always been predicated on the urgent need for a healing of the injured environment and its human fallout. His extraordinary work deserves to be better known, especially as a revelation of his insightful intelligence and passionate defiance of social injustice and needless, catastrophic wars.
For Ali the birds represent freedom and peace, and restore harmony to the troubled world.
However much that world has changed over the course of the last century, the new millennium finds artists like Ali Rahamad hard at work in his solitary effort to engage critical issues of self-, cultural, and national identity. His work challenges the prevailing stereotype of the apolitical artist, and he has shown great courage in his grappling with some of the more pressing concerns of the day and protesting the oppressive conditions that exist under ...