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Biography
Desmond Mah, 马福民 (b. 1974, Singapore; Singaporean-Australian with China and Taiwan ancestry, based in Boorloo/Perth) is a painter based in Perth, Western Australia. He migrated to Perth with his father in the late 1980s, where he encountered racism. Before 2017, Mah worked in secondary art education and horticulture, later becoming a full-time carer for his children. Entering professional practice later than many peers and working within Western Australia’s limited opportunities, he has strategically developed independent curatorial projects to generate autonomous exhibition platforms and cultivate collaborative networks. These curatorial initiatives operate as a direct extension of his studio concerns, providing a proactive framework to foster critical dialogue and advance his primary focus: painting. His first solo exhibition was in an artist-run-space in Perth, in 2019. Mah earned a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from Loughborough University (1998), supported by Lee Foundation and National Arts Council Singapore scholarships, and a diploma from LASALLE College of the Arts (1997). His prize achievements include the E.SUN Bank Special Selection Prize (Taiwan, 2022) and the Southern Buoy Studios Portrait Prize (Australia, 2021). He has participated in numerous exhibitions, residencies, and commissions, notably the Fremantle Arts Centre Studio Program (2023) and two Red Gate Residencies in Beijing (2018). His works are held in public and private collections in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Highlights include the 2026 Sovereign Asian Art Prize—which his work auctioned by Phillips Asia (Hong Kong)—as well as major exhibitions at the Inside-Out Art Museum (Beijing, 2025) and the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial (Perth, 2024). Statement I investigate structures of authority, hierarchy, and social control through the visual language of colonial representation. My works examine how European colonial systems classified, ranked, and legitimised bodies, land, and knowledge, and how these visual frameworks continue to shape postcolonial and contemporary perception. My position as a Singaporean-Australian migrant is central to my practice. Educated within postcolonial Singapore through curricula shaped by British historiography, and later encountering lived racism in Western Australia, I became attentive to how colonial ideologies and visual culture circulate across differing national contexts. As a person of colour and a migrant living on stolen, colonised land, I navigate a complex duality: I am both complicit in the settler state and a target of its ingrained, structural racism. I critique the mechanisms of Eurocentric power, exposing how it processes, marginalises, and excludes bodies of colour. By drawing upon historical imagery, documentary aesthetics, and systems of institutional collection display, my paintings dismantle inherited structures of power, cultural conditioning, and collective memory. I deliberately employ painting, a medium historically tied to colonial authority, while my technique visually destabilises its intended mythologies. This distinctive line-based painting method operates both formally and psychologically, functioning as a regulating mechanism for my ADHD. Repetitive, thread-like paint lines replace conventional brushstrokes, recalling stitching, repair, and textile construction anchored in memories of my mother’s labour as a seamstress. Through accumulation and disruption, these tactile lines simultaneously construct and unravel the painted image, loosening the visual bindings that maintain systems of order. I occasionally expand my painting practice through audio and other media, creating immersive works that extend my investigations into colonial memory, labour, and control. |
A Kampong village dwelling,
Kampong Bahru, Singapore, 1970s. Mah's childhood experience. Photo: nas.gov.sg 
6 months' studio residency with Fremantle Arts Centre, Moores
Studio Space (2023) 
Special Selection Award presented
by Yung-Jen Huang (Chairman), E.SUN Bank Awards 3rd Edition, Taipei (Dec 2022) 
Still Living Rent-free presented by Jonathan Crockett (Phillips Asia)
at The 2026 Sovereign Asian Art Prize Gala Auction, M+ Museum, Hong Kong (May 2026) |