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This work from Jalaini Abu Hassan’s early Lifeform series is the only one done on canvas, the rest being mainly works on paper. Never been exhibited, it has remained in private hands for 17 years and will now appear in public for the first time. The mixed media work combines heavy industrial medium of bitumen and Duco, which gives it a hard-shell look. Duco is a kind of automotive paint popular among American Action painters like Jackson Pollock in the 1960s. As in all the works in the series, which feature natural plants often used in the Malay kitchen, Se-hayat utilises images of seeds and beans. Culinary ingredients and the preparation of food are often cultural traits that can be distinctive although now confused or forgotten in the fusion of globalisation. They are also symbols of identity.

Jai exhibited his works on natural vegetation in the exhibition called Lifeform at Gallerie Taksu, Kuala Lumpur in 1996, after returning from New York where he obtained his second MFA from the Pratt Institute in 1994, his first from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1988. He had graduated with a BFA at the Mara Institute of Technology in 1985. His awards include the Major Award in the highly coveted Young Contemporary Artists Competition in 1985, the Gold Award in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Competition in 1991, 1st Prize (Drawing) in the Murray Hill Art Competition, New York in 1994, and the Rado Switzerland Commission Award in 2005. He has participated in exhibitions such as 12 ASEAN Artists (2002) and Malaysian Art Now (2004) at National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur and international art fairs the likes of Art Singapore and Melbourne Art Fair 2006.