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Rise Above It is believed to be the only piece from Ibrahim Hussein’s China series that was sold by the late artist (to the current owner) and the first of the series to be offered for sale in a public auction - in the history of Malaysian art.

This previously unreleased work was not featured in the capsule posthumous exhibition held in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur in conjunction with the launch of the late artist’s autobiography, Ib: A Life, in March 2010.

The China series stems from Ib’s tour to Kunming, among other Asian cities, in the mid-1990s, with trips to Beijing later. In the series, Ib remixed readymade images with gestural lines and forms, and reemployed ‘printage,’ a transfer technique he made popular during the late 1960s. It represents Ib’s interpretation of the triumphs and struggles in China’s history.

Rise Above It depicts a group of Chinese looking up at a ‘cocooned form’, which represents the ‘New China’ – a result of recent drastic change in China.