Award-winning photographer Ian Teh's love letter to Malaysia captures a changing Kuala Lumpur

CITIES are rarely still. They grow, spread and reshape themselves, with roads, buildings and neighbourhoods changing the landscape.

But beyond the concrete and glass, another story is unfolding — in the forests that sit alongside the city and remain closely intertwined with the lives of the people who call it home.

That relationship is at the heart of The Line: Beyond the Forest's Edge — a new exhibition by Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery (BNM MAG), featuring acclaimed photographer Ian Teh's award-winning The Line series.

Running until April 4, 2027, the exhibition looks at the evolving relationship between Greater Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding forests, documenting the city's urbanisation and transformation over the past five decades from a bird's-eye perspective.

But this is more than a collection of photographs about a changing skyline.

Through 51 photographs, an audio piece, a video documentary screened in a dark room and an immersive 360° virtual reality experience, Teh invites visitors to look at familiar landscapes differently — and, perhaps, to notice what lies beyond the city's increasingly shifting boundaries.

The work recently received the Sagamihara Photography Asia Award, but for Teh, The Line is rooted in something more personal than recognition.

He describes it as a "deeply personal love letter" to his country of birth, centred on Greater Kuala Lumpur and its forests.

For him, the city and the forest are the exhibition's two "main characters". One represents the lived reality of urban life; the other offers a glimpse of the remarkable, sometimes almost unfamiliar beauty that exists right on our doorstep.

And the two, he says, are inextricably connected.

PAUSE AND LOOK

As the city continues to face the pressures of growth and climate change, the exhibition touches on issues like climate adaptation, land use, biodiversity conservation and sustainable mobility.

BNM MAG director Noreen Zulkepli says the exhibition is intended to encourage visitors to think about how development and nature can thrive together, while reflecting the central bank's efforts to incorporate sustainability considerations into economic policies that support long-term growth and resilience.

For visitors, however, the idea need not feel quite so weighty. Perhaps it's simply an invitation to pause and look at a city many of us know intimately, and at the natural world that exists beside it.

Because the places we inhabit are never just buildings, roads and skylines. They are also the trees beyond the expressway, the forests at the edge of the city and the natural spaces woven quietly into our everyday lives.

intanm@nst.com.my

THE LINE: BEYOND THE FOREST'S EDGE

WHEN: Until April 4, 2027

WHERE: Level 1, BNM MAG

Open from Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm. Closed on Mondays. Admission is free.

Throughout the exhibition, BNM MAG will also offer a series of public programmes and workshops. Exhibition-inspired merchandise will be available at the Museum Shop.