What Can the Cultural and Creative Players Learn from Alena Murang by ICONADA CCI Research Team～～From the perspective of local cultural and creative development, Alena Murang’s artistic practice, together with Malaysia’s long-standing phenomenon of brain drain, may be understood as two endpoints of the same cultural structure: one end represents “loss and outward migration,” while the other represents “re-creation and return.” The former reveals the tensions experienced by local societies under globalization, whereas the latter demonstrates how local communities can rediscover their own capacity for cultural production.

Malaysia’s frequently discussed issue of “brain drain” appears, on the surface, to be a problem related to the economy and the education system. Yet when viewed through a cultural lens, it also reflects a deeper question: whether a locality is capable of sustaining and transforming the talents and creativity that it has cultivated. When professionally trained young people choose to leave, this is not merely an individual act of migration, but rather a manifestation of asymmetry in “value return” between the local and the global. Such asymmetry gradually deprives local society of part of the core energy needed for cultural renewal and industrial innovation. (Photo Courtesy: https://girlsclub.asia)