BA in Fine Art, MARA University of Technology (UiTM), Malaysia

[Bumi Manusia], Petronas Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

[Bumi Manusia Revisited], Penang State Gallery, Malaysia

[Pathfinder#], Artcube Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

[Silent Conversation], Core Design Gallery, Malaysia

[Art Solo 2023 - Silent Conversation in Taipei], Core Design Gallery, EXPO Dome @ Taipei Expo Park, Taiwan

Masnoor Ramli Mahmud or for short, Manon, is a prominent Malaysian artist known for his interdisciplinary approach, merging video, installation, and digital art with traditional painting. He graduated from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and became one of the founding members of MATAHATI, a highly influential art collective in Malaysia. Manon's work often explores themes of identity, socio-political issues, and cultural heritage, reflecting his deep engagement with Malaysian society and its transformations. His ability to combine digital media with conventional art forms has set him apart, positioning him as a pioneer in the Malaysian art scene.

Over his career, Masnoor has received multiple awards and exhibited widely in prominent local and international venues, cementing his role as a critical figure in Southeast Asian contemporary art. Through his art and his involvement with MATAHATI, Manon has significantly impacted the development of Malaysian art, inspiring a generation of artists to challenge norms and explore new mediums. His thought-provoking installations and multimedia work continue to push boundaries, encouraging discourse on Malaysia's identity in a rapidly globalizing world. 


Once belonged to the instrumental art collective Matahati (dispersed in 2007) has placed him under an unavoidable spotlight since the 1990s, one of the many directions in his art career that pushed his artistic ventures into multiple trajectories which include travelling across the globe spanning decades, concurrent with significant exhibitions that have emerged in-between. His impressive oeuvre over the years is not merely cultivated through his engagement with the tethered world, with investigative-like subjects encompassing insightful commentaries on the social, ethical, and cultural issues, but also his reevaluation on weighing its tendency to coalesce in the ‘maturing’ state of his being. Masnoor’s contemplative nature has always been his critical signature brought about in his experiences regardless of who, what, when and where — this, in essence, is how Masnoor relates as close as he possibly could to achieve a certain, not as superficial accomplishment when it comes to his art practice, impervious to the outcome.
Masnoor, also generally known for his dialectical approach, possesses a guiding principle that art should not conform to a rigid visual response. This is notable with his intersecting skills and techniques including experimentations with new media art that he favours courtesy of his shifting, overlapping careers which, to date, have inadvertently influenced his art practice. Breaking boundaries between genres seems to be the route he is comfortable taking as far as said practice is concerned, based on the fact that two years in the pandemic had curiously translated his methods to becoming mystically complex; something about the subjects Masnoor had concocted, moulded, and dutifully revised all these years that had felt at given times obscure to process in, yet adamant to resolve.

During this pivotal global phenomenon, too, Masnoor took off in reflecting on the subtle difference between being ‘stationary’ and ‘cautionary’, in which he allowed himself to delve deeper into the crux of the matter concerning the ‘disrupted’ routine in his art practice, its peculiarity on chances and occurrences, carrying the allegorical disconnection he had experienced in the wake of worldwide devastation — at the same time decontextualising and refocusing its situational turbulences that he deems appropriately imperative to share and perhaps, have a ‘silent conversation’ with.

Manon (Masnoor Ramli Mahmud)