Samsudin Abdul Wahab, better known as Buden, the fiercely imaginative contemporary artist whose raw, instinctive works helped define a new generation of Malaysian art in the mid-2000s, died early this morning at the National Cancer Institute in Putrajaya. He was 42, having battled stomach cancer over the last two years.
His death was confirmed by a representative of Chetak 17, the art studio Samsudin co-founded and remained closely associated with through its printmaking shows and collaborative projects.
Born in January 1984 in Selinsing near Semanggol - a village in the rural paddy-farming heartland of Perak - Samsudin was the son of a farmer and carried that grounded, rural sensibility into his artistic life.
Though he majored in printmaking and graduated with a fine arts degree from UiTM in Shah Alam in 2007, his practice moved fluidly across disciplines.
Best known for his paintings, he also worked in sculpture and performance, building a body of work where fantasy and reality frequently collided.
His imagery often felt dreamlike and disturbing yet deeply rooted in daily life – filled with strange figures, shifting shapes and emotional tension that reflected both inner turmoil and the unpredictability of the world around him.
His installation works - incorporating mud, salted fish, dried tamarind and coconut husks – were equally immersive, turning everyday materials into deeply sensory encounters. Presented at major institutions and galleries in Kuala Lumpur, these works carried the textures and smells of rural memory while reflecting Samsudin’s fascination with impermanence, decay and the fragile, fleeting nature of art itself.
In 2019, Samsudin was awarded the main prize at the National Art Gallery’s Bakat Muda Sezaman (Young Contemporaries) competition for Rambu-Rambu Memori, an installation drawn from recollections of his childhood in a kampung.
