TEAM

Ezrena Marwan is one of the team member of Malaysia Design Archive, a platform that aims to give context to the history of graphic design in Malaysia. Through this platform she encourages discourse on the role of graphic design in nation building and national identity. She is also the convener of Perempuan Pereka, a collective for women designers in Malaysia & Indonesia, as well as co-founder of Sejarah Wanita, an archive of women’s history. Ezrena is a graphic designer passionate about women’s rights, history and design. She upholds the 1964 Design Manifesto that calls for “a reversal of consumerism and profit driven priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communications”.

Jac sm Kee is a feminist activist, writer, researcher as well as the team member of Malaysia Design Archive. She is also a co-Director for the Centre for Independent Journalism, Malaysia, a non-profit organisation working on issues of media freedom and the right to freedom of expression and information towards a just, free and democratic society. She is the Manager of the Association for Progressive Communications, Women’s Rights Programme, a global civil society networked organisation advocating for free and open access to the internet towards social justice, gender equality and fundamental human rights. She was a selected winner of the Stieg Larsson Prize 2016 “for her struggle for women’s right to a free online environment and for an open and equal information society based on the potential of the internet.”

Simon Soon is a researcher and Senior Lecturer in the Visual Art Department of the Cultural Centre, University of Malaya. Simon joined Malaysia Design Archive in 2016. He completed a Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Sydney under an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship. His thesis ‘What is Left of Art?’ investigates the spatial-visual cultures at the intersection between left-leaning politicised art movements and the emergent modern publics of Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines from 1950s–1970s. His broader areas of interest include comparative modernities in art, urban histories, history of photography and art historiography. He has written on various topics related to 20th-century art across Asia and occasionally curates exhibitions, most recently Love Me in My Batik: Modern Batik Art from Malaysia and Beyond. He is also co-editor of Narratives of Malaysian Art Vol. 4. From 2015–16, he is a participant in the Power Institute’s ‘Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art’, funded by Getty Foundation’s ‘Connecting Art Histories’ initiative. He is also an editorial member of SOUTHEAST OF NOW: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art, a peer-review journal published by NUS Press.

LEAD RESEARCHER

Sheau Yun Lim (Sheau) is a writer and researcher on art and architecture. She is one-third of cloud projects, an independent publishing and curatorial collective working between art, architecture and history.

She moonlights as Research Lead at Malaysia Design Archive. Sheau holds a BA in Architecture (History, Theory & Criticism) from Yale University, where she was awarded the John Addison Porter Prize. She is currently pursuing her MArch at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

ARCHIVIST

Nadia Nasaruddin is a journalism graduate who loves history and archive-worthy things. She is currently addicted to Sudoku and a zealot of movies with lots of twisted plots in them.

READING GROUP

Chin Kar Yern

WEB DEVELOPMENT

Kevin Chan
Teo Eu-Gene

OUR TEAM OF CURRENT AND PAST COLLABORATORS

chi too
Beth Yahp
Bernice Chauly
Dennis Ong
Dill Malik
Dina Zaman
Eef Vermeij
Farish Noor
Fiona Lee
Jun Ng
Lainie Yeoh
Liyana Dizzy
Mei Chia
Nazir Harith Fadzilah
Por Heong Hong
Ray Langenbach
Qaleeda Talib
Rahel Joseph
Rusaslina Idrus
Sarah Amer
Syar S. Alia
Yap Lay Sheng
Yee I-Lann
ZH Liew (Joe)

Gender Studies Programme, University of Malaya

Imagined Malaysia

Rumah Attap Library & Collective 亞答屋84號圖書館

New Naratif

Sejarah Wanita

Tinta Budi

OUR ArtProjects

Visual Art Program Cultural Centre, University of Malaya

University of Sydney

New Museum 

Pusat Sejarah Rakyat

Ilham Gallery

Sunway University

First City University College

Malaysian Institute of Art

The Backroom

UCLA MEAP