“Nakaakan Ko Noh? A Sabahan Eats his way from Kota Kinabalu to Kangar” – Sack Tin Lim

Sack Tin Lim
122 x 122cm
Oil on Canvas
2025
Migration transformed the artist’s relationship with food. Moving from Sabah to West Malaysia in 2011 opened their world to a kaleidoscope of flavors, dishes from every corner of the country, each cooked, layered and complex. Here, the raw and the cooked stand in dialogue: the richness of the present set against the unprocessed memory of the past. That memory begins with a pasar tamu scene from Sabah, a vibrant marketplace where food exists in its rawest form. For the artist, it is a repository of memory, a sensory anchor to home, held with deep nostalgia. The raw produce speaks of memory in its pure form; the cooked dishes embody experiences shaped through migration. Together, they show how the past remains vivid even as the present deepens.