Anurendra Jegadeva counters anxiety caused by isolation by getting right back to basics

Anurendra Jegadeva's Orange Dancer' (acrylic on canvas, 2020). Photo: Wei-Ling Gallery

“I work best when the world is broken,” proclaims Australian-based Malaysian contemporary artist Anurendra Jegadeva (J. Anu) in a recennt interview. “And now we are really broken.”

With a timely art exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, Scream Inside Your Heart – New Paintings From Solitary Confinement, Anu, who used to work as a journalist for The Star in the 1990s talks about his creative process with nonchalance: “It’s like when I used to write, the approach has always been very simple. It is about trying to describe the world around me, to understand what is going on and then to see where I fit within that picture.”