Endurance and Overcoming in the Art of Amron Omar and Melati Suryodarmo: Invoking Uncommon Alignments for Contemporary Southeast Asian Art History

Motivated by the potential of Southeast Asian intra-regional comparisons, this article considers the art practice of two Southeast Asian artists who are influenced by different cultural contexts and from different generational cohorts, but who share affinity in their mutual explorations of the body and the self in their art. I discuss the art of Malaysian artist Amron Omar (b. 1957), recognised for his paintings and drawings since the 1980s and widely regarded as one of Malaysias most accomplished figurative artists, and Indonesia-born artist Melati Suryodarmo (b. 1969), whose contemporary avant-garde performance art came to international prominence in the early 2000s.