A Reflection on the Long Road Home
1. The Long Road Home
"There were three essential elements in this house when my father was still alive," said Nazura Rahime.
"Food—no one ever left hungry. Music—he played the guitar to unwind. Cigarettes—he smoked everywhere."
"To me, this house is a landscape of love. It is also a landscape of grief."
The shophouse was inherited by Nazura from Rahime Harun and Zarina Ariffin. It stands beside Jalan Negara in Taman Melawati, Ampang, Selangor.
Perhaps the "landscape" she speaks of is less a physical setting than a backdrop—a stage upon which a story unfolds. At its heart lies the experience of inheriting a house. Yet the experience itself is tangled and layered, refusing any neat sequence. As Nazura puts it, it is non-linear.
Yesterday, long ago, today, this very moment, tomorrow, and the future all seem to exist simultaneously within each present moment.
Perhaps the walls and objects inside the house speak all at once, answering one another across time in their own non-linear conversation. Sometimes they whisper; sometimes they echo. Certain spaces coax silent dialogues from within the heart. Memories abound—heavy ones, especially when one is alone with silence.
Yet within those quiet spaces, perhaps joy and enduring love remain hidden.
That was more or less what I felt when I once sat chatting casually with Nazura and Anderson Ee in that very shophouse. It felt like an older brother talking with his younger sister.
Nazura has always been an earnest learner, even after becoming a mother herself. She is diligent in seeking mentors and never tires of learning, despite occasionally being caught in the crossfire of the youthful angst and punk temperament I carried in my younger days.
Nazura Rahime is the only child of the late Rahime Harun, an old acquaintance of mine. Anyone who was involved in Malaysia's visual art scene during the 1980s and 1990s would surely know him. Those with a sense of history—and without selective amnesia—would readily acknowledge Rahime's stature. He served as Director of the Shah Alam Gallery before later becoming Director-General of the National Art Gallery.
Rahime Harun was born in Kampung Dodol, Penang, on 29 September 1954.
His wife, Zarina Ariffin, was born at Istana Juita in Kelantan on 21 November 1955. Nazura's maternal grandparents worked at the palace—her grandmother as a lady-in-waiting and her grandfather as a palace attendant.
Rahime and Zarina met and fell in love at Universiti Teknologi MARA during the 1970s—the disco era, when trousers were wide enough to sweep the floor. I was still in primary school then.
Rahime studied Industrial Design, while Zarina majored in Fine Metal Design. They were the "super-duper seniors" of the Art and Design Faculty—the affectionate nickname we used for Kajian Seni Lukis dan Seni Reka (School of Art and Design) during my own student days.
They married in 1977 in Kampung Huda, Kota Bharu, Kelantan.
I was in Standard Six in Teluk Intan, Perak.
Nazura was born two years later, on 14 March 1979, also in Kampung Huda.
Rahime and Zarina established A.P. Gallery—A.P. standing for Art Promoter—at Kuala Lumpur's Central Market in 1983, a year before I entered UiTM to study Fine Art.
Once I became a Fine Arts student, I often visited the gallery on weekends, especially when I had a little extra money in my pocket.
That gallery became an important classroom for me—not only in understanding art but also in learning how artists survived and made a living.
In 1996, Rahime and Zarina moved the gallery into the shophouse where it remains today in Taman Melawati.
Cut back to the 1980s.
Rahime was busy promoting artists while remaining one of the capital's most devoted supporters of Malaysian visual art.
He collected works by both established masters and emerging talents.
As far as I remember, collectors were few in those days.
Even fewer were willing to buy difficult, intellectually demanding works.
Collectors rarely sought public attention. Most preferred to remain quietly in the background. Some even avoided exhibition openings altogether, choosing instead to visit galleries alone, unnoticed.
Rahime eventually exhibited his own collection in a landmark exhibition titled Pursuing A Dream at Petronas Gallery in 1993.
I'm not certain whether it was Malaysia's first exhibition devoted entirely to a private collector's collection.
Ironically, I only learned about it later from Nazura because between 1989 and 1994 I was studying in the United States.
Nazura still carefully preserves numerous newspaper clippings documenting Rahime's activities from those years.
The earliest collector's exhibition that I personally visited was My Collection, held from October to December 2008 at Gallery 2A of the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur.
The exhibition was organised as a tribute to Rahime in his capacity as the Gallery's former Director-General.
If you're interested, look for the accompanying catalogue.
Many of the works featured there closely mirror my own journey through Malaysian contemporary art.
Several pieces that have always remained close to my heart were part of Rahime's remarkable collection.
Besides being a collector and promoter, Rahime also became an older brother—and sometimes a surrogate father—to struggling young artists.
His home became a refuge for aspiring artists who arrived in Kuala Lumpur with nowhere else to go.
Among them was the veteran poet Abang Ladin Nuawi.
The shophouse became a gathering place.
Back then, there were no fashionable terms like art space or placemaking to describe creative communities where artists could linger, converse, seek advice, or simply survive together.
Had such terms existed, Rahime would surely have been regarded as one of their pioneers.
He was the neighbourhood's "big brother."
He loved cooking for guests, feeding them generously, and spending long evenings talking about art while chain-smoking Benson & Hedges—or was it Marlboro Lights? I honestly can't remember anymore.
Two packs a day.
To me, Rahime was a pragmatic thinker and strategist, despite having no professorial title, no "Dr." before his name, and no PhD.
Today, his daughter Nazura carries that same spirit forward through her work in placemaking around Jalan Negara.
She has travelled tirelessly—even as far as Brazil and beyond—to study placemaking practices and to tell the story of Jalan Negara.
She has helped transform neglected spaces into warm, welcoming community environments filled with a sense of belonging, kinship, and shared ownership.
I once had a spirited discussion with Nazura about the darker side of gentrification—including aesthetic gentrification hidden beneath the language of placemaking.
Our debate became rather heated, particularly over the issue of gatekeeping and the tendency to use quantitative metrics as the primary basis for awarding grants.
Perhaps my suspicions were unfair.
But now I'm drifting off course.
Let's return to Rahime, his wife, and their collection.
Rahime passed away in 2008.
Zarina followed him two years later, in 2010.
The shophouse was closed.
What became of Nazura?
She did not set foot inside that house after her mother's death in 2010.
Not until 2020.
Ten years passed before she found the strength to return.
It was a long journey home.
"What must it have been like," I often wondered, "to grow up as the only child of Rahime and Zarina—and then to face losing them both?"
It is almost impossible to imagine.
The three of them had always been inseparable, travelling the world together ever since Nazura was a little girl.
"What was life like in that shophouse before and after they were gone? How could she possibly care for Rahime's invaluable collection? Did she truly understand what she had inherited? Did she know just how significant those works were?"
The collection included works by Amron Omar, Anuar Rasyid, Mad Anuar, Juhari Said, and many other important Malaysian artists.
"Wouldn't such an inheritance become an unbearable burden?"
Questions like these filled my mind.
On 21 November 2020—what would have been her mother's sixty-fifth birthday—Nazura began writing letters to her late mother.
Those letters became the medium through which she found her way home.
They also became the means through which she began to heal.
After ten years of carrying her grief, Nazura finally returned and reopened A.P. Gallery.
She chose to see herself as a bridge—standing between past and present.
Appropriately, this echoes the titles of two of Rahime's print works from 1998:
I Want To Be A Bridge
and
In Between.
Since reopening A.P. Gallery, Nazura has organised a number of exhibitions.
I have dropped by several of them, taking my time to observe.
One that stands out in particular is Rahmat Bahgia, curated by Anderson Ee.
If curating were a musical genre, I would describe Anderson's approach as fusion.
It feels fresh and bold, yet warm and approachable. There is an easy informality to it. It never feels patronising. Instead, it respects its audience, allowing visitors the freedom to think for themselves rather than overwhelming them with dense curatorial texts.
Neither excessively generic nor clinically sterile like a hospital, it strikes a rare balance.
Standing inside that shophouse, surrounded by works by Juhari Said, Amron Omar, Mad Anuar and Anuar Rasyid, I found myself transported back to my days at UiTM.
It felt strangely intimate.
The walls were filled with artworks that had accompanied my own artistic journey, and, I believe, the journeys of many other artists—especially those who once studied at UiTM.
Every work carried a story.
Some remained secret, hidden beneath the surface.
Every corner of the house holds memories and silent narratives.
Even a discarded box of Marlboro Lights has a story to tell.
But that is one story best heard directly from Nazura herself.
I would rather not spoil it—even though I borrowed it for the title of this essay.
Every object in the house seems to whisper in silence.
At times, it almost feels possible to carry on a conversation with the walls, the artworks, and the objects they shelter.
Listening to Nazura read the letters she wrote to her late mother creates an unexpected intimacy with certain rooms, particular objects, and selected artworks.
Her storytelling is unpretentious.
Grounded.
Direct.
Deeply personal.
Love, compassion, and longing flow through every sentence.
To write those letters, Nazura first had to give herself permission to become vulnerable—to be as honest and sincere as possible.
She also had to open herself in ways she had never been accustomed to doing.
I understand that.
I went through something similar myself while creating H3RO.
When people ask her what this programme should be called, Nazura simply answers:
"Dear Mama."
Nothing more.
No elaborate labels such as curatorial walk-through, art appreciation, storytelling performance, site-specific installation, live narration, or any of the fashionable terminology that often accompanies contemporary art.
To me, what she has created is an organically hybrid curatorial practice—a quiet fusion of exhibition, remembrance, conversation, and lived experience.
It is unlike any collector's exhibition I have encountered before.
By 2026, Dear Mama had already reached its fourth edition.
Each gathering centres on the letters Nazura writes to her late mother.
Personal memories intertwine with artworks hanging on the walls and archival objects scattered throughout the house.
Each room becomes part of the story.
The programme has also evolved into collaborations with fellow artists, musicians, filmmakers, theatre directors, production and lighting designers, and poets.
It is a form of partial co-creation, one that I hope lingers in people's hearts.
Together, these encounters gently persuade us to return home.
Many of us have spent far too long estranged from ourselves.
Too long postponing our return.
Come home.
2. Living with Art: When a Collection Becomes a Way of Remembering
Some people collect works of art.
Others live with them.
The distinction may appear slight, but in truth it is profound.
To me, Nazura is not simply "displaying her family's collection."
What I see is a daughter patiently relearning a language that had surrounded her throughout her entire childhood.
That language is not merely oil paint on canvas or sculpture on a pedestal.
It is the language of life itself.
Her parents' collection lived in the living room.
Around the dining table.
In the kitchen.
Along the corridors of the shophouse.
Where guests gathered.
Where laughter echoed.
Where meals were prepared and shared.
Where conversations unfolded.
Where mourning quietly took place.
Perhaps this is what makes Nazura's storytelling so distinctive.
She does not begin with the artist's name.
Nor the year a work was created.
Nor its aesthetic movement or historical significance.
She is not interested in dazzling audiences with intellectual jargon or sounding like an art historian.
Instead, she begins with her father, meticulously cutting carrots into perfectly equal lengths.
With her mother arranging flowers the day before guests arrived.
With nasi kandar.
Dalca.
Siput sedut.
And the lively commotion of the family kitchen.
At first glance, these stories seem to have little to do with visual art.
Yet, in truth, they are Nazura Rahime's visual art.
Or perhaps more accurately, they are the ecology from which the collection itself was born.
We often speak of artworks as objects.
Nazura reminds us that artworks truly live within relationships.
The relationship between artist and collector.
Between a house and those who inhabit it.
Between memory and the present.
When Nazura reads her letters to her late mother before an audience, something remarkable happens.
The paintings on the walls cease to be mere background.
They become witnesses.
The collection itself becomes witness.
Its emotional resonance changes.
It reaches somewhere much deeper.
It feels as though every artwork is quietly listening once again to the stories it has always known.
2. Living with Art: When a Collection Becomes a Way of Remembering (Part 3 – Conclusion)
As the former Director of the Tuanku Fauziah Museum & Gallery at Universiti Sains Malaysia, I am often reminded that the earliest museum in human history was not a purpose-built institution.
It was the home.
Yes—the home.
It is in the home that objects acquire meaning.
It is there that an ordinary chair becomes an heirloom.
That a piece of cloth becomes a family treasure.
That a painting, over time, ceases to be merely an artwork and becomes part of a family's history.
I once explored this idea in my exhibition HERO: A Decade, but that is another story.
Nazura is not constructing an art-historical narrative in the conventional sense.
Nor does she claim to be an art historian.
Instead, she is engaged in what might best be described as memory work—the labour of keeping memory alive.
Many years ago, my teacher in anthropology and the social sciences, the late Professor Wan Zawawi, introduced me to the idea of memory as data.
Until then, I had never encountered such a phrase.
Here, memory is not simply the recollection of past events.
It is the reactivation of feeling.
Of voices.
Of scent.
Of light.
Of presence.
That is why visitors do not come merely to look at the artworks.
They come to listen.
They come to share their own experiences of loss.
They come carrying stories of their own.
And eventually, they leave carrying a little light gathered from Nazura's stories—and from one another's.
Perhaps this is the most delicate form of curatorial practice.
A curator typically selects artworks.
Nazura selects stories.
A curator usually arranges objects.
Nazura arranges experiences.
She understands that a collection is not inherited merely through documentation or certificates of ownership.
It is inherited through the way we continue living with it.
Perhaps that is why her family's house still feels unmistakably like a home, even though it can now also be called a gallery.
And the gallery still feels unmistakably like a home, even though it is filled with works of art.
In an art world that is sometimes preoccupied with market value, investment, KPIs, ROI, auctions, and reputation, an approach like this feels quietly refreshing.
It reminds us that before an artwork ever became an asset, it was first someone's companion in life.
Ultimately, perhaps this is the true inheritance that Nazura Rahime is striving to preserve.
Not merely the collection her parents left behind. But the way they saw the world.
Through stories that are simple, honest, and filled with love, visitors are gently invited to rediscover the small collections within their own lives—an old photograph, the family dining table,their mother's voice, the aroma of the kitchen, or a painting that has hung silently on the wall for years, all the while safeguarding the entire history of a family.
Because, in the end, the most precious art is not the most expensive.
It is the art that continues to live with people, deep within the quietest chambers of the human soul.
Let us return to that place—the deepest garden of the soul.
KEBUN JIWA HALUS
28 August 2026
