For those living in a hectic, highly urbanised city such as Kuala Lumpur, it can be easy to draw a line between the natural and man-made worlds.
The latest exhibition at Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery (BNM MAG), however, seeks to blur that boundary, prompting visitors to consider how closely our lives remain connected to nature.
The Line: Beyond The Forest’s Edge, on display at the gallery’s Level 1 space until April 2027, features photographer Ian Teh’s award-winning series The Line, which recently received the Sagamihara Photography Asia Award in Japan.
The exhibition explores the evolving relationship between Greater KL and its surrounding forests through 51 photographs captured within or on the city’s fringes over two years, each accompanied by an informative caption.
Beyond Teh’s photographs, the city and forest are brought to life through sound recordings and footage from Gema Bumi, an environmental and cultural soundscape archive founded by multimedia arts practioners Yii Kah Hoe and William Kok, and an immersive 360° virtual reality experience by Tom White.
Donning a VR headset, visitors are transported into familiar urban settings, including a busy pasar.
Taking a bird’s-eye view, The Line documents Greater KL’s urbanisation over the past five decades, tracing the city’s remarkable transformation. It also examines climate adaptation, land use, biodiversity conservation and sustainable mobility.
A love letter to KL
The BNM MAG exhibition marks a significant milestone for Teh, 55, whose passion lies in documentary photography. He has worked as a photographer since the mid-1990s, with his work appearing in publications including GEO, The New Yorker and The New York Times.
The Petaling Jaya-born photographer’s The Line project received a 2023 National Geographic Explorer grant. He describes it as a “deeply personal love letter” to Greater KL and its forests.
“This exhibition brings together two ‘main characters’ – the city in its lived reality and the surrounding forests – and looks at how both of them coexist and have shaped each other over time, at times quite profoundly,” said Teh.
Whether arriving by elevator or via BNM MAG’s nautilus shell-inspired staircase, visitors are first greeted by the sounds and images of the forest.
“One thing that we did when we designed this exhibition was to really think about the layout and how people would be coming in. I wanted to start by introducing people to the very thing that sparked this project in the first place, which is essentially the forest,” he added.
From bright rays of sunlight shining through thick layers of canopy, a forest floor covered in fallen flowers and children happily splashing about in a clear stream, this section of the exhibition celebrates the wonders of the rainforest.
Teh admits he developed a deeper appreciation for the rainforests surrounding the Klang Valley only after returning to Malaysia following more than 30 years in London.
“As a young boy growing up in PJ, all I knew was the concrete jungle. But after living abroad, I had picked up these outdoor hobbies, like hiking and rock climbing, so I started to do them with my friends here.
“That was when I discovered we have a lot of amazing green spaces just a 20-minute drive out from the city. But I also realised that these spaces are often underappreciated,” he said.
Seeing visitors engage with his work, Teh cites a familiar Malay saying: “Tak kenal, maka tak cinta”.
“You can’t love what you don’t know, so one of the things I wanted to do with the exhibition was to create a space where Malaysians can come and see familiar spaces, particularly our nature, in a different light, and hopefully inspire them to go out there and experience it themselves,” said Teh.
During a recent walkthrough, BNM MAG deputy director Alnizah Shamsudeen said the gallery was keen to collaborate with Teh after seeing his exhibition proposal.
“Sustainability is an important topic for us, but it can be quite technical, so when Ian approached us with his idea for the exhibition, we thought it’d be an interesting and approachable way to talk about sustainability,” said Alnizah.
Inextricably intertwined
As a photographer, Teh realised that as much as he loved his work, it wasn’t enough to just take beautiful photographs.
“I didn’t really set out to take on the role as some kind of advocate, but I found that I needed my work to have some kind of function beyond their aesthetic.
“I saw the impact that someone like (US photojournalist) Eugene Smith had, where he spent years focused on bringing awareness to one particular issue, and it made me realise that photography is ultimately like another language,” he said.
To develop the project, Teh consulted experts, including ecologists and urban planners, and conducted extensive research into developments in Greater KL and other cities worldwide.
“In learning more about what was happening elsewhere in the world and seeing how other cities have implemented sustainable approaches like sponge cities and 15-minute cities, it gave me a much wider perspective on what was possible and made me look at the Klang Valley with new eyes,” said Teh.
As visitors move through the exhibition, the focus shifts from primary forests on the city’s fringes to Klang Valley’s urban core, revealing the close ties between people and nature: homes at the foot of Batu Caves’ towering limestone karsts, vines reclaiming an abandoned, unfinished building, and people fishing beneath flyovers in teh tarik-coloured, rubbish-strewn rivers.
There’s even a large quote along the stairs underlining the core message of the exhibition: “Nature underpins all economic activities.”
“Beyond celebrating nature and how far we’ve come as a country, I wanted to communicate the challenges we face today in balancing economic development with conserving the natural resources we rely on. This hopefully leads to getting people to reflect on the future we envision for ourselves and how we should move forward,” said Teh.
Throughout the exhibition period, BNM MAG will run a series of public programmes and workshops, while exhibition-inspired merchandise will be available at the Museum Shop.
BNM MAG is also collaborating with Teh on a book to accompany the exhibition.
The Line: Beyond The Forest’s Edge is showing at Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur until April 2027. Free admission.
