Chef de Mulu

With Midnight Bamba, Chef de Mulu unfolds a neo-expressionist, symbolist-dreamlike vision, rooted in Malaysian shamanic traditions. What begins as a jungle scene intensifies through decisive gestures, layered fields of color and rhythmic marks into a ritual space – energy, pulse, movement.

Color leads the narrative: violet opens the portal through which beings emerge into the visible world. From blue, spirits and demons condense; red grants them presence as Hantu – in Malay culture a collective term for nature and forest spirits that warn, protect or seduce. Their red eyes return the gaze of the viewer, establishing an immediate correspondence with the beyond.

Yellow overturns night into radiance: entering the ritual, darkness shifts into light, while dense green carries the breath of the rainforest. Dark, percussive accents cut across the surface like drumbeats, sustaining the trance in motion.

The title gathers these forces: Midnight as the ghostly hour, an opening into another sphere; Bamba – resonant with bamboo – invokes the jungle and at once the rhythm of the ceremony. In their convergence, Midnight Bamba becomes a charged threshold – a pulsating in-between realm of mysticism, sensation and ritual intensity.