Anne Samat’s Blinded No More, So Immortality We Go represents a gendered pair of bodies. Characteristic of the artist’s visual vocabulary, the wall-bound assemblages are constructed out of various craft-based artefacts and found objects, evoking the abstracted form of a human anatomy. While incorporating a broad range of everyday objects, from rakes to kitchen implements to cutlery, the work also features salient craft elements.

Having undergone gender reassignment surgery in her twenties, Samat cuts a unique figure among a younger generation of Malaysian artists. She has stated that her Malay-Muslim identity, however complicated by her personal life choices, informs her artistic practice in fundamental ways – “roots,” to use her term of choice, features as a central trope in her work. That is an understanding that is complicated by Samat’s transgendered identity. 

Images courtesy of the Artist