Singer-songwriter Zee Avi will host an open mic session at the Grey Box, GMBB in KL on Sept 13 as part of the 'Rentak Malaysiaku' celebration. Photo: Handout
FESTIVAL: 'RENTAK MALAYSIAKU'
Venue: GMBB, Jalan Robertson, Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur
Date: Sept 13-17
This Malaysia Day holiday season, Kuala Lumpur’s GMBB creative mall will host “Rentak MalaysiaKu”, a four-day cultural showcase from Sept 13–16. The event transforms the mall into a busy platform, celebrating the rhythms, flavours, and stories that define the nation.
An open mic hosted by Zee Avi is a highlight on Sept 13 at the Grey Box, while the “Grandmother Stories” workshop on Sept 16 offers a sharing circle for those who sign up in time.
Visitors can immerse themselves in the evocative strains of Anderson Kalang’s sape, performed as part of the Echoes Of The Earth exhibition; step into the sacred rhythms of the Main Jo’oh dance with Tompoq Topoh, a Mah Meri cultural troupe from Carey Island, Selangor; and witness a reimagined take on wayang kulit brought to life by the award-winning Fusion Wayang Kulit, where tradition meets inventive storytelling.
Staying true to its creative mall spirit, GMBB’s programme also shines a spotlight on heritage traditions. Visitors can join culinary workshops – from Jiak Kopi’s Pumpkin Ondeh-Ondeh to Melaka Chetti Kueh by the Melaka Chetti Heritage Association – and explore a lively mix of exhibitions, performances, miniature calligraphy, craft sessions, and talks featuring over 40 Malaysian artists.
There’s plenty to enjoy in the programme – you can plan your day around the activities or simply explore the GMBB building at your own pace.
More info here.
Visitors view Anas Afandi’s new series at the 'Reframe & Resist: Decolonise Here and Now!' exhibition at Harta Space. Photo: Low Boon Tat/The Star
EXHIBITION: 'REFRAME & RESIST: DECOLONISE HERE AND NOW!'
Venue: Harta Space, Ampang, Selangor
Date: ends Sept 28
At Harta Space, Reframe & Resist: Decolonise Here and Now! invites visitors to reflect on the unfinished legacies of colonialism through art, ecology, and cultural memory. The exhibition is part of a wider collaboration supported by the British Council’s "Connections Through Culture" programme.
Co-curated by Malaysian lecturer-curator Rebecca Yeoh and Britain-based art historian Leon Wainwright, the show brings a sharp curatorial lens to how art can spark conversations about power, land, and knowledge systems.
Five artists anchor the exhibition: dancer-choreographer Aida Redza, visual artist Anas Afandi, the art-tech duo Koh Kai Ting and Aw Boon Xin, multidisciplinary artist Jakob Van Klang, and theorist-artist Roopesh Sitharan. Their works tackle colonial inheritances in distinct ways – from rethinking monuments and branding to revisiting folklore, waterways, and even the notion of academic “qualifications.”
Spanning performance, painting, installation, marbling, and conceptual practice, the exhibition offers multiple points of entry into its central theme. From movement and myth to rivers, monuments, and text, each medium opens a new path into the conversation.
As part of the programme, the "Living History Project" will host two public talks on Sept 14 (10am–4pm): "Tanah Tertumpah: Our Rights, Not Just Our Rites" and "Solidarity with Indigenous Communities: Hutan Kita Hak Kita".
Admission is free.
More info here.
BOOK EVENT: LIT BOOKS: IN CONVERSATION SERIES
Venue: Bangsar, KL
Date: Sept 16, 4pm
Malaysian readers will have the rare opportunity to hear a literary voice from South Asia when India-born author Somnath Batabyal sits in conversation with Lit Books co-founder Fong Min Hun about his latest novel, Red River. Set against the backdrop of the Assam separatist movement that roiled the 1980s and 1990s, the book is both an intimate family saga and a searing political narrative.
A former investigative journalist, Somnath brings a keen eye for detail and a sharp grasp of human complexity. In Red River, he probes the fault lines of identity, otherness, and violence - political as well as personal - through the intersecting lives of three families across two generations. The result is a story that reveals how identity politics can corrode communities from within, leaving behind inevitable fractures and heartbreak.
Threaded through the novel are echoes of pivotal historical currents: the Bangladesh Liberation War, the refugee crisis that followed, the rise of insurgency and its foreign entanglements, the heavy hand of the Armed Forces Act of 1953, and the shifting economy of India’s North-East.
Somnath binds these forces into a narrative as fluid and unrelenting as the Brahmaputra - the “red river” that not only shapes a landscape, but also sweeps along the destinies of those caught in its current.
Tickets are RM10, and attendees will receive a voucher to redeem on the event day.
More info here.
Photographer Nadirah Zakariya’s 'Air Mata Air' is a contemplative exhibition tracing a return to self through the primal sources of body and water. Photo: The Star/Azman Ghani
EXHIBITION: NADIRAH ZAKARIYA'S 'AIR MATA AIR'
Venue: The Back Room, Zhongshan building, KL
Date: ends Oct 5
Photographer Nadirah Zakariya presents Air Mata Air, a contemplative exhibition, curated by Eva McGovern, that maps a return to self through two primal sources: the body and water.
When the world overwhelms, Nadirah turns instinctively to water - lakes, rivers, oceans - as places of refuge and renewal. This intimate connection takes shape in the Back Room gallery through fabric panels paired with backlit lightboxes, where image and text merge in a play of shadow, translucence, and memory.
The title itself holds a double resonance in Bahasa Malaysia: air mata means “tears,” while mata air refers to natural springs. Tears carry both joy and sorrow, and Nadirah evokes this spectrum with words pinned to the lightboxes - phrases like hanyut in tears (“drowning in tears”) and rindu stings like saltwater (“missing someone stings like saltwater”). Each pairing becomes a meditation on fragility, resilience, and the emotional tides that shape us.
The result is a gallery transformed into an inner landscape - a space where grief and longing coexist with clarity and release, leading visitors to step quietly into their own reflections.
Free entry. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 12pm–6pm.
More info here.
Last chance to see Sabahan artist Tresyah Join’s debut solo, 'Echoes Of Existence' (Tullinggou Koposion in Dusun), a meditation on memory, nature, and transformation. Photo: The Star/Low Boon Tat
EXHIBITION: TRESYAH JOIN's 'ECHOES OF EXISTENCE'
Venue: Rissim Contemporary, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur
Date: ends Sept 14
Last call to catch Sabahan artist Tresyah Join's debut solo exhibition, Echoes Of Existence (Tullinggou Koposion in Dusun language), which offers a meditation on memory, nature, and transformation.
Her semi-abstract landscapes - alive with birds, fish, and butterflies - merge oil and collage into layered visions of flight, fluidity, and renewal.
The series began during the stillness of the Covid-19 lockdown, when Join, then a student moving between Kuala Lumpur and her hometown of Ranau, turned necessity into invention. Working in hotel rooms and makeshift studios, she cut and collaged fragments of painted canvas to save time, a method that has since evolved into her signature.
In Echoes Of Existence, this collage language deepens into metaphor: piecing fragments into wholeness, Join reflects on memory, resilience, and the shifting landscapes - both inner and outer - that shape us.
Free entry. Open Friday to Sunday, 12pm–7pm.
More info here.
