Art in the Era of Mahathir

For the exhibition titled ‘Era Mahathir’, Ilham Gallery has collected works completed during the 22-year administration of the country’s fourth Prime Minister. It was during this period that the country went from an agrarian nation to a largely industrial one. The landscape of the country changed with new infrastructure and development projects. Malaysians were imbued with a burgeoning sense of self-confidence which epitomised the “can do” spirit (‘Malaysia Boleh’) of those times. The exhibition features both contemporaneous and recent works by artists to help us understand the complex realities of that period and provide us with divergent views, outside our official narratives.