See the work of Datuk Hoessein Enas, father of Malaysian portrait painting

Ilham gallery is a public art space designed to support the development of Malaysian modern and contemporary art within a regional and global context.

Ilham gallery creative director and curator Valentine Willie is the person you can count on if you need to know how many pipes and wooden hornbill souvenirs were owned by pioneering artist Datuk Hoessein Enas (1924-1995), and also the kind of vinyl records he listened to while he worked in his studio in Damansara Heights in Kuala Lumpur.

All of Hoessein’s personal artefacts mentioned can be seen – and heard – at a detailed reconstruction of the Indonesian-born Malaysian artist’s work studio, which is one of the many highlights at the recently opened Ilham gallery in the ultra-modern Ilham Tower in Kuala Lumpur.