For its inaugural participation in the 22nd edition of NADA Miami 2024, Yeo Workshop is pleased to showcase a duo-presentation of new works by Southeast Asian artists Fyerool Darma and Noor Mahnun (Anum). Each artist holds a distinct artistic vernacular in their respective approach towards painting: Darma mines various aspects of technology as informed by historical and cultural archives to develop his polymerised compositions, while Anum turns to personal memories and her immediate physical surrounding for her realist paintings that are suggestive of contemporary ‘hypersentimentalism’ today. Yet visual synergies can be drawn across both their works, with their shared interest in geometric patterns and ornamentation as a means and tool to question the conventions of painting and broader symbolisms in our environment.
Fyerool Darma excavates the history of textiles and technology in his material experimentations, interweaving plastic polymers and materials salvaged from our data waste with the empirical and scientific (Artificial Intelligence, algorithms, infographics) to reveal the complex entanglements of our cultural inheritance. He introduces Printed Circuit Boards (PCB), which are reminiscent of Sumerian or cuneiform tablets—the oldest form of inscription, to frame these landscapes where information and materiality are inexorably enmeshed. They are a continuation of his earlier Screenshot series, and derivative of his most recent commission ‘L♥ND$C♥PES R D♥T♥ W♥$TESZ’ (2024) for CHAT Centre for Heritage Art and Textiles Hong Kong which questions the value and limitations of imaging in our image economy, its subjectivities and its eventual circulation. Blurring the lines between lore, organic forms, handcrafted, and manufactured aesthetics, Darma’s technorganic paintings are shaped by this notion of mythdrift—a transformation where traditional myths are reimagined as para-fictions. These narratives, like data in flux, are constantly rewoven with emergent technologies, creating new, ambiguous forms.
Contrary to his hyper-stylised reliefs, Noor Mahnun’s figurative and still life paintings urges contemplation with a completely different sentiment. She draws on everyday life, fusing elements of realism with the unconventional to render her domestic scenes somewhat curious. Her paintings often depict geometrical patterns that subtly gestures at the boundaries of ornamentation and abstraction, particularly in her diptych pairings between object and decoration that seem to subliminally point towards a certain visual coherency. Many other motifs and details in these works are also redolent of earlier paintings and encounters—Baldi (2024) recalls the posturing from her 90s compositions while Bangku lends new context to her friend’s shophouse in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia that she had first painted in tea (2024). The title of the latter (bangku refers to ‘bench’ or ‘stool’ in Malay) also relates to a wordplay exercise ‘A bangku is…?’ that she often carries out with her students when teaching, stimulating their imagination to create stools out of paper and scrap materials.
The works presented at NADA Miami provide first insights in the lead-up to each artist’s forthcoming solo exhibitions at the gallery in 2025. Fyerool Darma will present his fifth solo exhibition ‘krØmæ§piritZ’ at the gallery in January 2025 and Noor Mahnun will have her debut exhibition at the gallery later in summer 2025.