Jennifer P. Linggi
Director
Jennifer graduated as an architect from Oxford Brookes University, UK. After
working in London, UK and Brunei she returned home to Sabah, Malaysia in
2004 to pursue her first love - art.
As an artist, she has exhibited in various states in Malaysia and in Tokyo, Japan
since 2006. In her role as the Director of the Sabah Art Gallery for 12 years, she
is no stranger to the art scene and has worked extensively with the creative
communities. She has also produced several publications namely, Urban Design
Considerations for Sabah (2005), Sabah Crafts (2015), and co-authored Flora &
Fauna at the ACC-Bank Negara Malaysia (2016).
Jennifer’s appreciation for art and hand-crafted objects has led to regular visits to
the local tamu (market) and craft fairs, where she has amassed an impressive
collection of woven baskets, hats and many other artifacts from various
indigenious communities in Malaysia. This growing collection formed the basis of
her book on material culture entitled The Kampung Legacy – A Journal of
North Borneo’s Traditional Baskets (1st edition-2017 & 2nd edition-2019).
This is the first of a series of several visual documentations of Malaysian heritage
skills.
She has served as the Director of the Sabah Art Gallery, Kota Kinabalu, and as a
member of advisory panels for the Sabah Museum Acquisition Committee,
Sabah Cultural Board, the Federal Cultural Development Agency Kuala Lumpur,
Bank Negara Malaysia and the Ethnography Museum Geneva, Switzerland.
Jennifer continues to explore and research on culture through architecture,
design and art. The primary motivation for her obsession is a desire to increase
appreciation of these sadly waning ethnic craft skills and to preserve the
knowledge for future generations by producing reference material of Borneo’s
traditional culture.