Anne Samat’s Kaleidoscopic Weavings Find Beauty in Unexpected Places

Anne Samat often wanders the salvage yards near her home in Cold Spring, New York. The 51-year-old Malaysian artist, who recently moved to the Hudson Valley from Kuala Lumpur, isn’t necessarily searching for anything in particular; any item—doorstoppers, discarded silverware, or metal pipes—might catch her eye. For Samat, these abandoned objects are a means to add dimension to (or “doll up,” in her words) her monumental textiles.

“Sometimes I walk there with my short dress and high heels, and people probably think I’m drunk or lost,” Samat joked with Artsy ahead of the opening of “The Origin of Savage Beauty,” her solo show at Marc Straus’s new Tribeca location.

On view until December 21st, the exhibition comes at a significant moment in Samat’s career, following her presentation at the Biennale of Sydney in March and setting the stage for her anticipated solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design next year. The new show is filled with the fruits of her trips to the junkyard—and to garage sales, dollar stores, and the like. Objects including garden rakes, rattan sticks, bejeweled masks, plastic swords, beads, and belts are intricately woven into textiles that function as her base, or as she puts it, her “white canvas.” In fact, these foundational materials aren’t white at all. They’re pua kumbu—multicolored, patterned ceremonial textiles created by the Iban people of Malaysia. After Samat’s meticulous ornamentation process, the resulting works are kaleidoscopic, totemic altars that often drape and trail onto the floor.

“I manage to create something beautiful from unconventional materials,” Samat noted. “The meaning of ‘savage beauty’ is finding the beauty in the unconventional.”

Samat’s salvaging practice dates back to 1995. While completing her bachelor’s degree in art and design at the Mara Institute of Technology in Shah Alam, Malaysia, she rescued a loom that her teachers there intended to throw away. She still uses this loom in her studio in Kuala Lumpur, which she maintains along with her New York residence. When she can’t use it anymore, she intends to turn it into a sculpture.

Samat’s love of artmaking goes back even further, to when she was six years old. But her passion was at odds with the conventional career paths encouraged by the Malaysian education system. Samat remembers how schools typically funnel gifted students (herself included) into science-related fields: mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. At the end of high school, she reached the critical juncture of choosing her college major. “My father said to me, ‘Follow your heart—follow your heart of hearts.’ You know what I did after that? I didn’t give a shit. I took the pen and immediately checked ‘art and design,’” she recalled, tearing up at the memory.

Much of Samat’s work honors the love she holds for her family. The centerpiece of “The Origin of Savage Beauty” is Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow #2 (2024), a handwoven tapestry ornamented with her salvage finds and dressed with metal links, beads, and even toy army figures dedicated to her deceased relatives. In particular, the middle section memorializes her older brother, who passed away from lung cancer 18 months ago. Among various metal and plastic materials, a “no smoking” sign embedded into the work nods to his illness. “But we’re not going to talk about a sad part of it,” Samat said. She prefers to celebrate the impact that her family has had on her practice: “They are the ones who actually push me to go further and to pursue my career.”

Samat’s mother also looms large—literally—in her practice. In 2010, the artist was living in England and working as a Formula 1 model when her mother’s health began to deteriorate, compelling her to return to Malaysia. She spent about eight years caring for her mother before she passed away, a period that she says taught her “a new level of love.” It inspired works like her contribution to the Biennale of Sydney, Cannot Be Broken and Won’t Live Unspoken #2 (2023), another colossal wall tapestry embedded with found objects that spread across the gallery wall and onto the ground. The main section of the piece resembles two anthropomorphic forms, which appear to have outstretched arms, as if offering an embrace. Samat made the work while in the throes of grief. She explains that the towering larger figure represents her mother looking over her (even though, she says, her mother was “just four foot eight” to her five foot two).