Final year Media and Communication Studies students from the APU’s School of Marketing & Management (SoMM) visited ILHAM Art Gallery as part of the Audiences and Fandom module, enhancing their understanding of audience engagement, cultural participation, and the role of contemporary art as a communicative medium beyond the classroom.

Final year Media and Communication Studies students from the School of Marketing & Management (SoMM) taking the Audiences and Fandom module embarked on an exploratory out-of-classroom learning visit to ILHAM Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur on 24 January 2026.

The visit formed part of the module’s experiential learning approach, designed to extend students’ engagement with cultural texts beyond the classroom and into lived, sensory spaces of meaning-making.

Established in 2015, ILHAM Art Gallery is a public art institution dedicated to supporting and promoting modern and contemporary art. 

The students were warmly welcomed by Ms Linda Patricia Valanganny, Gallery Manager at ILHAM, who shared valuable insights into the gallery’s mission, exhibition programming, and operational practices.

She also expressed the gallery’s interest in encouraging students to apply for internship opportunities at ILHAM Gallery, highlighting potential pathways for industry exposure and professional development.

During the visit, students were exposed to contemporary artistic practices, curatorial strategies, and the vital role played by cultural institutions in shaping audience engagement, interpretation, and wider cultural discourse.

Students explored ILHAM Art Show 2025, an exhibition showcasing a diverse range of artworks produced using varied media and materials, including wood, pottery, fabric, books, and cement. 

Although several works initially appeared abstract, the accompanying curatorial texts enabled students to engage more deeply with the cultural contexts, social experiences, and personal values underpinning each artist’s practice. 

Prominent themes such as memory, family, loss, social class, and everyday lived experiences emerged throughout the exhibition, resonating strongly with familiar Malaysian contexts.

Reflecting on the experience, student Kok Xin Yi shared that experiencing ILHAM in person helped students better understand how art communicates identity, history, and emotion effectively.

“It also enhanced my appreciation of Malaysian art while inspiring more thoughtful and creative communication.

“Such reflections highlighted the value of direct engagement with art as a communicative medium,” she said.

Several artworks illustrated how ordinary emotions, and everyday experiences could be transformed into powerful visual narratives. 

For instance, Joshua Kane’s cement-based piece translated the familiar frustration of searching for parking into a tangible artistic form. 

Other works featured ceramic objects shaped like food and arranged on a dining table, evoking themes of family, absence, grief, and remembrance. 

Through these varied visual languages and materials, the exhibition encouraged students to critically reflect on identity, class, and social realities within Malaysia and beyond.

In addition to the main exhibition, students visited a solo exhibition by artist Eunhee Lee titled Colourless, Odourless. 

This exhibition included a documentary examining environmental and social issues within electronic processing industries. 

The documentary foregrounded the lived experiences of workers in electronic manufacturing, revealing inadequate safety measures, long-term health risks, and cases of serious illness and death resulting from prolonged exposure to toxic working conditions. 

The exhibition offered a critical commentary on how industrial expansion and profit-driven corporate practices can lead to labour exploitation and the devaluation of human lives, raising pressing ethical and social justice concerns.

From the perspective of the Audiences and Fandom module, the visit enabled students to analyse artworks as communicative texts and to observe how meaning was co-constructed between artists, curators, institutions, and audiences. 

The calm and contemplative gallery environment stood in sharp contrast to the fast-paced, algorithm-driven digital media spaces often examined in class, prompting students to reflect on alternative modes of audience engagement, emotional response, and slower forms of cultural consumption.

SoMM Lecturer, Mr Ninderpal Singh, who accompanied the students, said that by stepping out of the classroom and into ILHAM Gallery, the students experienced a dynamic conversation between artist, curator, and audience.

“It was a powerful lesson in how art communicates complex ideas about our world, far beyond the digital screen.”

This visit successfully supported the learning objectives of the Audiences and Fandom module, deepening students’ understanding of audience reception, cultural participation, and the role of art institutions in shaping contemporary discourse, while providing meaningful insights into how art functions as a powerful medium of communication within society.