The late Krishen Jit, who died in 2005, shaped Malaysian theatre for over four decades – his legacy endures through the Krishen Jit Fund, which continues to support diverse Malaysian arts. Photo: Filepic/The Star
Where arts funding often feels like an afterthought than a priority, the survival of an independent grant can feel miraculous.
The Krishen Jit Fund has not only survived but thrived for two decades, standing as one of the few consistent lifelines for artists navigating the country’s arts and cultural ecosystem. Amid the early pandemic cancellations in 2020, it stood as the only arts grant programme that kept going.
Since its launch in 2006, the fund has awarded 95 grants amounting to RM723,000.00, each one a vital investment on originality, risk-taking, and the future of Malaysian artistry and creativity.
Administered and managed by Five Arts Centre, and supported by Astro and the Creador Foundation, the Krishen Jit Fund marks its 20th anniversary this year.
The fund continues to honour the spirit of the late theatre doyen, Datuk Krishen Jit, whose practice was defiantly interdisciplinary, intercultural, experimental, and committed to the plethora of Malaysian voices.
Five Arts Centre co-founder Marion D'Cruz at the 2025 Krishen Jit Fund recipients’ announcement at GMBB in Kuala Lumpur recently. Photo: Five Arts Centre
This year, seven recipients have been awarded a total of RM62,000.00, their projects collectively pointing to the themes that continue to animate our arts scene and national narrative(s): memory and history, the negotiations of Malaysian life, and the reimagining of tradition, space, and power.
A presentation ceremony was held at the Five Arts Centre space at the GMBB creative mall in Kuala Lumpur last week.
Memory, history and identity
Drawing from her Dusun heritage, Sabahan filmmaker Nadira Ilana threads together questions of nationhood, collective memory, and bloodlines through the Batu Sumpah Keningau.
Described as a monument, the monolith bears the oaths exchanged between the newly independent Federation of Malaya and the interior peoples of Sabah in their effort to form Malaysia.
Ilana, whose practice foregrounds minority and indigenous histories and understandings, taps into familial archives, sacred rites and sidelined histories to create an experimental video art project called Sumpah Batu Sumpah (working title). Later this year, Ilana will also be releasing her debut feature film, Ballad Of The Half-Boy, based on an indigenous Sabahan folktale.
Turning to another fragile memory, Ong Qian Se’s The Shape Of An Almond features her grandmother, Ah Ma, a 90-year-old living with Alzheimer’s. The non-fiction film stretches the boundaries of traditional biographical documentary with reenactments, puppetry, and animation.
Ho is studying Petaling Street’s gentrification by turning urban space into art. Photo: Five Arts Centre
The film archives the fading narratives of the 1940s and 1950s, including moments of migration, the Japanese Occupation, and the post-Merdeka era, complementing textbook histories with lived experience. In doing so, Ong’s work enriches Malaysia’s repository of oral histories, preserving community memory in forms that might otherwise be lost to time.
Room to reflect
Tapping into the urgency of contemporary discourse, Mohd Nur Failul’s Kamilah Penipu - Tapi Kami Tak Menipu (working title) documents perspectives on pressing national issues that surface during the production period.
These interviews will be conducted at random, along some of KL’s highly populated streets, with a range of questions that are aimed towards provoking unfiltered responses. Their filmed answers and reactions will then be transformed into movement, sound, and image, weaved together as 60 individual one-minute long pieces.
The work spotlights the kinds of negotiations that take place among Malaysians and compels audiences to interrogate who deceives, who is deceived, and how truth and lies shape the everyday Malaysian experience.
Adriana will launch Kubu Seni, an arts incubator for stateless youth in Semporna under NGO Bordeo Komrad in Sabah. Photo: The Star/Low Boon Tat
Meanwhile, director Lee Yee Han and multimedia designer Tan Chung Cea respond to the rise of deepfakes and media bias in Discrimination and Visual Illusions. Combining live performance, interactive installation, and an online archive, their hybrid work explores how visual manipulation shapes social prejudice here.
Having won the Grand Prize at China’s SanXingDui Theatre Festival in 2015 with Discrimination, the duo now extend their inquiry into the contemporary dangers of misinformation, reminding us that in our media-saturated environments, perception itself is political.
Reimagining tradition
Arts lecturer and researcher Ho Chee Jen responds to gentrification in Petaling Street by centring urban space as art.
Inspired by the simple gallery wall label, her work installs descriptions along streetscapes, signboards, and placards, prompting city users to consider and imagine what once existed in these rapidly changing environs.
By transforming urban space into an open-air archive, Ho pushes us to ask: who gets to write urban history, and whose histories are erased when development takes over?
Tradition, too, is being pushed into new directions.
Wayang Women, an all-female, transnational troupe, reclaim the shadow play form with Pennagal, a performance centred on the legendary female ghost who defies borders and patriarchal control.
Weaving stories of womanhood and ecological collapse across South-East Asia, Wayang Women proposes traditional practice as a tool of critique and spotlights female resilience.
Finally, Adriana Nordin Manan is set to introduce Kubu Seni, an arts incubator in Semporna (Sabah) designed for stateless youth under NGO Bordeo Komrad. Through workshops in writing, film, and sound, the programme empowers marginalised young voices to experiment, collaborate, and showcase their work in a community arts festival.
Drawing from years of conducting writing workshops, Adriana recognises that many young participants carry trauma. For this project, she collaborates with Tedd Louise, a clinical psychologist, to offer storytelling not only as a creative practice, but as a life skill and avenue for expression, visibility and agency for children denied the access and privilege.
