When one of their own is recognized in a distant place, a certain kind of pride subtly emerges in small towns. That’s the general atmosphere in Terengganu at the moment, as local artists continue to land spots in international residency programs that, until recently, seemed unattainable for anyone working outside of Kuala Lumpur’s gallery circuit.
Amar Shahid bin Salehudin, a 39-year-old Terengganu artist who was chosen this year for the Khazanah Associate Artist Residency Program, or KAAR, is the best example. This September, he will work out of the Fire Station Residency space at Acme Studios in London for twelve weeks, collaborating with artists from the UK’s contemporary scene. The fact that he was chosen out of 47 applicants shows how competitive these positions have become. In his current work, Amar combines cyanotype printing with batik, an ancient craft that most people wouldn’t consider combining with a chemical-photography process. This type of project is likely to read differently to an audience in London than it would at home, and it appears that this contrast is precisely the point.
He is not the first artist from Terengganu to receive this kind of opportunity. Hisyamuddin Abdullah was the first person to participate in the SARENG Gallery’s International Art Residency back in 2024. He spent two and a half months at Studio Pompstraat in Rotterdam. The residency concluded with a group show during the Groot Rotterdams Atelier Weekend, and the space is located in Charlois, a neighborhood with a long-standing international art community. Observing the recurrence of this pattern—Terengganu talent, offshore placement, a return home with fresh material and new contacts—begins to resemble a strategy developing simultaneously across several organizations rather than a coincidence.
The fact that no one person owns this push is intriguing. As part of its larger Advancing Malaysia strategy, Khazanah Nasional oversees KAAR, portraying artist development as something akin to economic policy. In contrast, SARENG Gallery is privately run and receives funding from organizations like Asia Art Archive and Bloomberg. Different funders, different cities, but the same underlying assumption is that sending Malaysian artists overseas, even for a short time, alters what they return with.
When this year’s winners were revealed, Datuk Amirul Feisal Wan Zahir, managing director of Khazanah, put it simply: “When an artist returns and continues to grow, the surrounding community grows with them.” It’s a neat line that may have been practiced a bit, but it does convey a genuine aspect of these programs’ design. The actual residency is brief. The goal of the subsequent Tea Talk events, exhibitions, and mentorship sessions back in Malaysia is to make that twelve-week window last longer.
The question of scale remains unanswered. Only twelve artists have received support from KAAR since 2017, and SARENG’s Rotterdam program only occurs every two years. These offshore placements are still scarce. A few international slots each cycle hardly meet the demand for a state with as much creative output as Terengganu—batik weavers, photographers, and multidisciplinary artists working with common materials. It’s possible that the actual change hasn’t occurred yet and that what we are currently witnessing is merely the initial framework of something more significant.
Nevertheless, Amar’s residency falls during London’s Frieze Week, exposing him to curators and collectors who would not normally travel to Southeast Asia. The question that no one can yet answer is whether that exposure results in long-term visibility for Terengganu’s art scene in particular, rather than just for the people who are chosen. These events typically proceed as follows: the program is announced, the artist departs, and the true impact doesn’t become apparent until years later, in galleries that no one anticipated.
