Defining Cultural Identity on Your Own Terms

How does one define their cultural identity, especially when they have lived away from their homeland for an extended period of time? How do you express it without disregarding how your current lived experiences have shaped you? Join Sabahan artists Hannah Bhatt and Fay Ulrica as they unpack the tensions between tradition and modern life, carrying ancestral memory into contemporary spaces, and what it means to belong to a place while constantly changing within it.

Artist Profiles:

Hannah Bhatt

Hannah Bhatt is a Malaysian ceramic artist and founder of Uncanny Valley Studios, known for her surreal, tactile sculptures that explore memory, identity, and transformation. A former lawyer turned artist, Hannah

weaves personal narratives often shaped by motherhood, loss, and resilience into work that invites intimate connection. Her practice merges the whimsical and uncanny, blending storytelling, sculpture, and community engagement. Hannah’s pieces have been exhibited in solo and group shows, and she often collaborates across disciplines, from fashion to social impact projects. Through Uncanny Valley Studios, she creates spaces both physical and emotional for people to reflect, play, and find beauty in the in-between.

Fay Ulrica

Fay Ulrica is a Malaysian visual artist, video producer, and creative technologist whose work blurs the line between beauty and discomfort. Emerging from a foundational background in illustration

and moving images, her body of work represents a long-term evolution of narrative craft—a continuous confrontation with identity, memory, and emotional exposure. Fay grounds her studio grit in structural execution as the Managing Partner of Undercurrent, a collective building resilient Cultural

Infrastructure within Malaysia’s creative economy, and as the founder of Far Out Solutions, an AI-driven tech studio focused on building intelligent solutions. She approaches technology not as an optimisation tool, but as an extension of craft, empathy, and real world use.