Alycia Anthony is a Malaysian-born multidisciplinary artist living and working in Pomona, CA. With over two decades of sustained practice, her work bridges painting and sculpture, drawing deeply from hybrid cultures and the layered histories of patterns and objects. From a post-colonial, feminist perspective, and across the places she has called home, including Kuala Lumpur, Honolulu, and Los Angeles, her work is shaped by the cultural nuances and shifting dynamics of these environments. Anthony’s practice stems from both a subconscious sense of inheritance and an unconscious immigrant psyche, reflecting the ongoing negotiation between adapting and the need to preserve some form of personal identity.

Anthony is interested in the conceptual and theoretical analysis of outdated notions of decorative aesthetics that are shifting and shaping a new cultural critique. Her work engages with academic discourse as it contends with a well-established patriarchal authority over Western and European art history and pedagogy, as well as with current divisions and conversations surrounding craft and fine art. She views art as a vehicle for storytelling, connection, and reflection, aiming to create work that challenges perceptions, sparks conversation, and highlights the unseen forces that shape lives past, present, and future. Her paintings and sculptures push beyond surface aesthetics, engaging viewers in a dialogue about overlooked narratives and the hidden meaning carried within patterns, color, and everyday objects.

Anthony explores elements of adornment, concealment, and protection as pathways for accommodation and assimilation, connecting these motifs to personal, cultural, and socio-political histories. She investigates how and why identities are protected through pattern and color. Themes of displacement, adaptation, and the often disregarded identity embedded in objects are central to her work, particularly when examined through the lens of materiality and ornamentation. She is fascinated by how discarded remnants and scraps become carriers of information, evolving into new, transmuted forms. Her work frequently incorporates found and second-hand resources, ranging from hand-painted Batik to machined vintage lace, revealing a visual language that embraces cycles of deterioration and restoration. This process underscores the fragile yet resilient bonds between identity, memory, and place, challenging conventional notions of value and permanence.

Guided by these heterogeneous influences, Anthony’s practice reclaims the decorative’s power in art, using material culture to convey cultural and emotional depth while expanding the dialogue between past traditions and contemporary critique.