Chef de Mulu

In Malay Kampong, Chef de Mulu depicts a traditional Malaysian village: simple stilted wooden houses, framed by palms, appear at first calm and orderly. Yet this idyll is immediately unsettled by what looms above. The jungle is not painted as a natural backdrop, but inverted – turned upside down, marked by the pink line at the top edge. In this inversion, nature and civilisation confront one another in an unstable, threatening balance.

Green and brown tones suggest vegetation, but the dominant yellows and reds transform it into flames – symbols of destruction and annihilation. Within this turmoil, a black skull emerges, faint but visible: the spirit of the jungle, a sign of death and transience. Between these layers lies blue – an unnatural colour in the context of the forest, here symbolising external Western forces. It reads as a cold, foreign stratum imposed upon the jungle, disturbing its natural order: a symbol of colonial and global powers that exploit and endanger the rainforest.

The composition makes clear that the village can only exist as long as the jungle survives. Its inversion becomes an emblem of precarious equilibrium – a world literally turned upside down.

Stylistically, Malay Kampong fuses Symbolist imagery with the eruptive energy of Neo-Expressionism. Gestural brushstrokes, aggressive reds, and overlays of blue-black generate a dreamlike, mystical atmosphere, in which the village itself appears fragile – overshadowed by destructive forces that both sustain and threaten it.

Thus, Malay Kampong becomes an image of dependency, threat and the fragile balance between nature and civilisation – a village that can only endure for as long as the forest remains.