art space tetra Artist in Residence: Series 5 Artist：Seah Zelin

Zelin Seah is a Malaysian visual artist and lecturer in fine art. His practice explores the intertwining of land, memory and material traces. Through works rooted in long-term research, he explores the traces left upon the body, maps and landscape by extractive economies and postcolonial systems of governance.

Working across multiple media, including installation, fibre art and cartographic interventions, he utilises natural materials such as rattan and oil palm waste to unearth the silent histories inherent within them. Using altered land title deeds and forgotten flora and fauna as clues, her recent projects examine how nature has been framed within value systems, and how the ghosts of erased knowledge linger within ecological remnants. She also collaborates with grassroots conservation groups and is involved in creating visual tools for legal and civic resistance.

]In 2025, he undertook residencies at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Fukuoka) and Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), and held a solo exhibition, ‘This Land is ( ) Land’, at Richard Koh Fine Art (Singapore). Her works are held in the collections of the Singapore Art Museum and the National Art Gallery Malaysia.

In recent years, alongside her own practice, she has taken an interest in artist-led infrastructure and the nature of independent art spaces in Southeast Asia. Whilst planning to establish an art space in Malaysia, her research in Japan focuses on learning from the methods of sustaining alternative art initiatives, strategies for community building, and the politics of space.

During her residency, she plans to document art space tetra, which is due to close, whilst fostering engagement through presentations, dialogues, and collaborative pop-up performances and exhibitions.