Proposed Thesis Title: To Frame A Nation: Aspirational Nationalism, Art, And Everyday Identity In 1990s–2000s Malaysia

Supervisor: Dr Priya Jaradi

Sheryl Tan is a Master’s student in the History Department at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Her current research focuses on the intersections of art, visual culture, nationalism, and historical memory in Southeast Asia. Sheryl’s current thesis aims to investigate the formation of national identity in Malaysia during the Mahathir era by focusing on the relationship between state-policy-led cultural narratives and artist responses to these narratives. Through this research, she hopes to explore how national identity is articulated through visual culture and cultural policy, as well as in the tensions between official narratives and alternative understandings of Malaysian identity.

Sheryl earned her Bachelor’s degree in History at NUS, and holds a Master’s degree in Asian Art Histories from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her postgraduate research examined representations of Malaysian identity through contemporary visual art practices, focusing on the ways in which artists engage with, reinterpret, and complicate dominant narratives of the nation. She has also served as an editor at National Gallery Singapore, where she worked closely on exhibition publications and in-gallery interpretive texts including the current permanent exhibition Singapore Stories: Pathways and Detours in Art.

Beyond academics, Sheryl enjoys classical music and plays the violin with a local string ensemble.