Conditional Love Series: Letter From Dave, 2006 by Anurendra Jegadeva

A love of portrait based, narrative driven work fuels Anurendra Jegadeva. His paintings have found great success in Malaysia and around the world, and in 2019 he was invited to display an installation made up of several portraits titled ‘Yesterday, in a Padded Room...’ at the 58th Venice Biennale. Several important international exhibitions and events have extended invitations to Anurendra over the years, amongst them the Asian Art Biennale 2015, Taiwan, Art Basel Hong Kong 2015 and Art Stage Singapore 2014. Anurendra has held solo exhibitions in Malaysia, London and Australia. For over nine years he contributed to the Star, a leading Malaysian newspaper, as an art critic, and has held important curatorial positions in Australia and Malaysia, at Petronas Gallery. Anurendra’s works are held in the collections of National Visual Art Gallery Kuala Lumpur, Singapore Art Museum and The AFK Collection.

Anurendra’s eighth solo ‘Conditional Love’ was painted upon his return to Kuala Lumpur after a period living in Australia. Re-looking his beloved homeland after this time as a migrant in a foreign country he was struck that despite developments and transformations, KL was plagued by several of the same issues (particularly politically) as ever. His paintings in this series were the boldest political statements he had made until this time, as they examined identity, race, nation-hood and politics through his critical eye. Anurendra’s incorporation of mixed media elements and extremely painterly style emerges in these works, which are all highly revealing about the personal and the communal. This is the style that went on to influence ‘Yesterday, in a padded room’, marking this out as an important creative moment for Anurendra.