The 'I Remember You' exhibition marks Mulaika’s progress with a new body of work shaped over the past four years. Photo: Harta Space
There's a sense now that Mulaika Nordin, no longer the teenage prodigy she once was, is more deliberate about the shape and scale of her solo exhibitions.
Her latest show, I Remember You – a series of 28 abstract paintings on view at Harta Space, Ampang, Selangor until Nov 30 – presents almost half the number of works she mounted in her previous two outings.
But this isn’t simply a matter of reducing volume.
It reflects a shift in how she builds an exhibition, with her artistic instincts expanding beyond reaction and immediacy into something more considered, more worldly and attuned to the broader ideas that now anchor her practice.
In 2019, at just 16, Mulaika packed the National Art Gallery’s Creative Space with more than 55 paintings, and her 2021 show at Ken Gallery pushed that prolific run even further with over 60 works.
The I Remember You exhibition, which showcases Mulaika’s evolution as a painter, now gives visitors a chance to catch up with her latest work after a four-year hiatus while she completed her law studies in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Mulaika’s 'Age Of Love' is an earthy abstraction, its warm, grounded tones evoking both the passage of time and the fullness of human experience.Photo: The Star/M. Irsyad
Curated by her sister Zahara Nordin – a constant collaborator and sounding board – the show unfolds in three chapters: past, present and future.
“Her first solo A Thousand Years Of Change (2019) and (follow-up show) I Know You’re Somewhere So Far (2021) had over 50 pieces each. Both captured how prolific she was at the time. This new exhibition, however, took much longer. There’s more restraint, more thought behind each piece and how they relate to the concept,” says Zahara, 20, in a recent interview at the gallery.
“The concept began four years ago when she started studying law. That’s when we saw her bridge law and art, using legal terms as metaphors for her life, deconstructing them, applying them to herself and pushing them to the limit,” she adds.
Beyond visible boundaries
Mulaika, who turns 22 next month, views her latest exhibition – which includes seven new paintings completed this year – as a series that reflects her growing understanding of herself within the flow of time and the wider universe.
After returning to Malaysia this year with a law degree, she is now completing a professional law exam to practise locally.
A visitor views Mulaika’s 'All Of The Orient', part of her new series at Harta Space. Photo: The Star/M. Irsyad
The Kuala Lumpur-born, self-taught artist also plans to continue her art, a pursuit she began at 12.
“Law is often seen as dry, rigid and hypercritical, but it involves a surprising amount of discretion and humanity – both abstract concepts. As an abstract painter, I find that similarity fascinating; it engages the same parts of my brain,” says Mulaika, reflecting on the contrasting philosophies of law and art.
The new exhibition is anchored by a legal concept she learned early: “time immemorial”, a span of time beyond human memory.
“It was about customs and how they were preserved in our country, things like the structures of royalty and religion that endured after colonial rule. Law became a way to hold onto these traditions since before memory. I found that so abstract, yet so real and binding,” she explains.
This notion of deep time surfaces vividly in her paintings Santubong and Senja, both inspired by a visit to Mount Santubong in Sarawak.
“There it was, this massive, immovable figure that predates human life and will outlive me. That moment made me reflect on permanence – how the Earth remembers everything, even when we don’t,” says Mulaika, whose work finds inspiration in the fluid, unfolding landscapes of celebrated Malaysian artist Tajuddin Ismail and the abstract sensibilities of German master Gerhard Richter.
Fading time lines
Mountains and geological forms recur in her work, though some feel more unsettling. In The True Cost, barren shapes with fractured tones are layered with faded text, evoking helplessness.
The piece references the limestone hills of the Kinta Valley – once a breathtaking panorama, now scarred and hollowed by quarrying.
Sisters Zahara (left) and Mulaika pose during the opening of 'I Remember You' at Harta Space in Selangor. Photo: Harta Space
“These paintings have a spiritual quality, but not in a religious sense. It’s more about reverence for the Earth, and how humans interact with it. These also act as continued motivation in my pursuit to practice environmental law here,” says Mulaika.
In works like Canon and Come As A Dream, she explores memory and oblivion through abstraction, creating compositions that resist form and narrative.
“They evoke a kind of emptiness, because before anything came into being, there was nothing. And that nothingness still lingers beneath everything that exists,” she says.
Mulaika recalls being “deep in thought about the idea of the Big Bang” while painting them.
“I had this intense experience, as if I was tracing the thread of my own existence – the moments my parents met and their parents before them, all the way back, each encounter making me possible. It felt like painting the memory of a dream, where every meeting, every choice, converges into who I am today,” she says.
As you stroll through the gallery, the exhibition shifts from mourning what’s gone to accepting the natural passage of things.
Besides paintings, Mulaika displays two X-rays - her torso and skull - inviting audiences to look beneath the physical. Photo: The Star/M. Irsyad
The pairing of Raqib and Atid introduces sand and light as motifs, evoking the angels in Islam believed to record human deeds, while Suatu Hari Nanti and Age Of Love bring the journey full circle – meditations on the fragility of existence and the endurance of love.
“Life is short in the grand scheme of the universe, and since we are all here, we should make full use of the time, love with passion, engage with nature and protect it.
"It is also a reminder that one day I too shall become part of in memoriam, much like mountains. In a way, these paintings are like a self-portrait of me hundreds of years from now,” she concludes.
Mulaika Nordin’s I Remember You is showing at Harta Space, Ampang, Selangor until Nov 30.
