Women by Women: The Shortlist | Vogue Niyat (Intentions) Dhan Illiani Yusof MALAYSIA This photograph is part of the series ‘Niyat (Intentions)’. Kurungpillar explores faith, textile, and the lived realities of Muslim women in Malaysia, using cultural and religious dress as a language of both visibility and concealment. Through baju kurung silhouettes and telekung-like forms, the work reveals the multiplicity of identities that exist beneath public narratives of modesty, femininity, and...

Iman Alternative (2025) man Alternative (2025) of modern Malay femininity, absurd, exhausted, holy, and defiant. The surreal resilience that emerges when survival itself becomes performance. By collapsing the sacred with the industrial, symbols of modesty and devotion are entangled with tools of industry, intertwining faith and femininity as both burden and sustenance. The work reflects on how modern ideas of development and capital continue to extract from our identities and bodies. It...

In this work, the artist distills the act of visibility and erasure into a stark, minimal frame: only the eyes emerge from a field of white, marked by calligraphic strokes that recall both script and wound. The work embodies a paradox: it invites reading while withholding clarity. This refrain echoes through the piece, suggesting that the act of looking at a Muslim woman is always shaped by projection, misreading, or incompleteness. Both revelation and apostrophe - hyper-read, yet profoundly...