Recorder (2025) explores themes of music, care, and domestic ritual, rooted in the intimate act of playing music for plants. Inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Flute Partita in A minor—a soundtrack Anum often listens to while ironing—the painting captures the rhythm of everyday life. It follows two preparatory studies, serunai and snake charmer (both 2023), the former visually referencing Dzulkifli Buyung’s The Cacti Grower (1960). The title Recorder plays on dual meanings: a musical instrument and a tool for memory, echoing the painting’s reflective tone. In the final composition, a snake plant nods to the idea of the snake charmer, reimagined here as nurturing rather than hypnotic. The central figure’s tentative posture conveys vulnerability, while details like the skillfully mixed green wall—a nod to botanical painting—and a recycled wood side table drawn from Anum’s home, ground the work in personal and material resonance.

Recorder blends humor and nostalgia, weaving personal history with cultural references to create a tender meditation on care and ritual. By recalling her time as a recorder player—an instrument she played in high school, even winning a national competition—Anum infuses the work with autobiographical depth. The act of playing music to plants becomes a broader metaphor for breath, care, and atmosphere, suggesting that both art and everyday gestures can “clean the air.” In this way, Recorder reflects Anum’s recurring themes of domestic life, memory, and art history, offering a quiet yet profound exploration of wellbeing through sound and routine.