One of Malaysia’s most renowned artists, Latiff Mohidin, became the first Southeast Asian to be featured in the Centre Pompidou in Paris earlier this year, in an exhibition presented by the National Gallery Singapore. The retrospective, called “Latiff Mohidin: Pago Pago (1960-1969)”, is now being shown in Kuala Lumpur at the ILHAM Gallery. We speak to Latiff Mohiddin and curator Shabbir Mustafa about the significance of Latiff’s work to a specific era in Southeast Asian history.