Becca Yeap Preserves Artist Legacy
at Lingkaran in Ipoh, MY
February 3, 2026
interview and edit by Joyce Keokham, Kelly Rogers
For the past year, Becca Yeap has worked to install a permanent exhibition to showcase the work of Nepalese painter, Najar Man Lama, which opened in December 2025 at Lingkaran in Ipoh, Malaysia. Here, Becca speaks with 4N about this new community space, and carrying on the legacy of an artist who sustained his practice in Becca’s family’s storied, multigenerational sawmill.
4N: Tell us about Lingkaran.
Becca Yeap: Lingkaran is inside a former sawmill in Ipoh, Malaysia which is now a hybrid space to hold community events, art, and performances. The sawmill was started by my grandfather in 1991, eventually closed in 2019. In 2021, my uncle, Tan Kai Lek, started to reimagine the space and initially designed the front of the sawmill as an open-air space for a local Hainanese white coffee shop, Sin Yoon Long. Last year I also began to curate an exhibition of a thangka artist, Najar Man Lama, who once labored and painted inside this sawmill.
Now the core fixtures include the coffee shop, the Najar Man Lama exhibition, and a plastic recycling hub called Purpose Plastics. Beyond that, much of the venue remains open and flexible, including a performance stage, a gaming area, and areas for gatherings.
4N: How did you decide on the name?
BY: Lingkaran is a Malay word that means “circle” or something cyclical in nature, but can also be used quite liberally. It’s playful and adaptive which captures the spirit of the place—the majority of the material choices throughout the sawmill are either retained or repurposed. 20 years ago, my uncle had the foresight to save discarded trees and buy them from developers. He has repurposed termite-infested wood for the light fixtures, the wall of the coffee shop from bricks of demolished homes. So finding a word that captures that existing legacy while offering room for what it can be reimagined to felt fitting.
4N: A new component of Lingkaran is the Najar Man Exhibition, showing the work of an artist who became an important part of the old sawmill’s history. What is the connection between Najar Man and your family?
BY: The exhibition is a retrospective of the late Nepalese artist Najar Man Lama who originally came to Malaysia as a migrant worker during the Nepalese Civil War. Over 20 of his works are shown in an effort to archive his cultural contributions he made in the context in which he had labored and painted. Migrant workers are often invisible, and the exhibition creates space to engage with migration, labor, and multi-cultural coexistence as lived realities in Malaysia.
4N: How did you initially become involved?
BY: I encountered his work three years ago on a routine visit to the sawmill, and was stunned and deeply moved. What are the chances that thangka would end up in a quiet city in an industrial factory and now be sitting here? Crazy. When I’ve asked my uncles about why they supported him and allowed him to leave his post, they mentioned in ways it was Yuán Fèn or fate that he ended up at the factory. Lama’s yuan fen is now their yuan fen which they chose to support.
So in 2025 I decided to leave New York and move to Ipoh to work on curating this exhibition. While I started to work on the exhibition, I also began to work on explaining the history of the sawmill and the spaces that have come to exist before me.
4N: As you mentioned, migrant workers are traditionally invisible. How was Najar Man able to continue painting thangkas?
BY: In Southeast Asia, Malaysia is one of the countries most reliant on migrant labor. Migrant workers come on a five-year visa that can only be renewed twice so rarely a path to permanent residency. The work they do is notoriously called the three D’s in Malaysia—dirty, dangerous and difficult.
He arrived in Ipoh in 2005 at the age of 40 to this sawmill, and 6 months into arriving his manager saw a painting of Buddha hung above his bed in his room and told my uncle who was one of co-owners, Tak Kai Lek. My uncles and grandfathers decided to support him, and allowed him to fully leave his work inside the sawmill and paint instead. So over the next ten years, he sustained his practice within the factory.
4N: What is a thangka?
BY: Thangka is a Tibetan artistic practice, typically depicting Buddhist deities and teachings. Traditionally thangka is mounted and rolled up into a scroll so monks and lay families could roll it up and carry it around the Himalayas to share Buddhism in a visual manner.
Thangka is also distinctly different in that there is strict attention to composition and ratios because the artist in often depicting a deity. So artists study the ratios for years to understand how each deity is drawn, and in what position. The artists follow and respect a strict composition especially since a consecrated thangka incited the deity to enter the painting.
4N: Why did you choose to hold the exhibition inside Lingkaran?
BY: The moment I say that thangkas are in Ipoh, people tend to raise their eyebrows. There is often confusion on why a Tibetan painting tradition exists in a quiet town in Malaysia, and who this body of work belongs to. I felt there was no better way to understand Lama and his work than to encounter them here. Since I see this exhibiiton as an archival project that is preserving multiple legacies: the nieghborhood, the sawmill, the migrant, the artist, and the work, the context makes it that much richer.
4N: Do you think it’s Yuán Fèn that you are now exhibiting Najar Man’s work, after all these years?
BY: I believe yuán fèn (fate) is an undercurrent. When I first saw Lama’s work, I felt it was a tragedy that this existed out of sight. At the same time, I was struck by the improbability: a migrant worker ends up here, becomes noticed, is supported to return to his thangka practice, and the work survives instead of being sold off for profit. And now, it’s just sitting here. The situation was absurd to me. I’m thankful it coincided with my own life timing and set in motion the start of my move to Malaysia, and research into his work.
4N: What was it like to finally be able to welcome people to the opening?
BY: Alot of anticipation, but I was ready. Ipoh is not what Malaysians would say is a “happening” city, so when people come they come quite intentionally. Everytime someone sees Lama’s work, they respond to it differently.
When I was thinking of who to program for the opening alongside the exhibition, I also wanted to bring underground talent in from hard electronic music or improvisational noise. The artists understand that this sort of performance in Malaysia is not widely acceptable or desired. So the audience was split between people encountering these practices for the first time and a smaller group who were deliberately seeking out this kind of work being showcased locally.
4N: What kind of challenges have you faced as you’re working to build out this community?
BY: There were many challenges, but the most difficult was figuring out how to tell Lama’s story with care. He is no longer with us, so I traveled to Nepal to meet his family and hear from them directly, to understand how he started and the reasons for his departure. In Tibetan Buddhist culture, the belongings of the deceased are often burned rather than kept, which also made it impossible to catalogue his possessions that institutions usually rely on.
As I researched, his thangkas also raised questions. Some symbols deviate from tradition, such as the presence of dragons, which may be Malaysian Chinese influence. Recognizing these deviations and his interpretations became a large part of my curatorial work.
4N: What are your hopes for Lingkaran, moving forward?
BY: My hope for Lingkaran is that it can evolve collectively. The recent opening connected me to many Malaysian collectives and artists, both within and outside of Ipoh. There’s a lot of excitement around having another space for experimentation here, and I look forward to collaborating with more local talents.
Learn more about Lingkaran (@lingkaranipoh), and visit in Ipoh (Lot 59241, Bukit Merah Industrial Estate, Batu 4½, 31450 Ipoh, Perak).