“Cerita Kurang Sa”
In collaboration with Fiza Azmi, supported by ThinkCity
This photographic commission was undertaken for Fiza Azmi and is grounded in her conceptual framing of Kuala Kangsar as a town in transition. My role was to realise the project through photographic methodology and visual interpretation.
Cerita Kurang Sa examines the shifting character of Kuala Kangsar by tracing the lives and labour of its shopkeepers and artisanal makers, the communities that have historically shaped the town’s identity.
Situated along the Perak River, Kuala Kangsar has long been sustained by the movement of goods, skills, and stories that travelled its waters. Its traditional crafts, once integral to local commerce and cultural continuity, persist today but not without strain. As the river’s rhythms change, the conditions under which these crafts survive change as well. Many practitioners face the quiet fading of their trades. Younger generations often decline to inherit the work, and some elders choose not to pass the craft on as business slows. At the same time, a new and unexpected pattern emerges. Young people with no familial ties to these crafts are seeking to learn them out of genuine curiosity and commitment to the work.
With the town poised on the edge of modernization and accelerated development, the future of these practices becomes uncertain. It is unclear whether these crafts will continue as living and evolving forms of knowledge or become reduced to curated tokens for visitors passing through.
This project documents Kuala Kangsar at this moment of transition, attending to the textures, gestures, and quiet negotiations that define craft in a changing landscape, asking what endures, what transforms, and what might be lost.
