Artist, and creator, Arman describes themself as “That Bitch” when being in space surrounded by peers of their community. Arriving the second amongst the bunch of four, Arman—commonly known as Bumi Arman on Instagram—came stumbling out of a car with a canvas just as tall as them. 

Having not met them prior to the shoot, Arman immediately walked towards us with a smile as bright as the sun and as wide as a smile could get. We greeted them similarly and urged them to have breakfast with us at the little restaurant below the studio. It was nothing fancy. Just some tea and roti canai. This stranger to us felt comfortable around us. And so were we. It was like a group of friends catching up, sharing stories, and just getting to know each other once more after an extended period of being part of for some time.

Some adjectives that can be used to describe our modern-day Poison Ivy—endearing, caring, nurturing, and a lover of all things regarding nature. With no intention of defeating social and environmental issues with malice and brute force like their comic alter ego, Arman instead does it through their art and collective life experiences. Coalescing their knowledge of the world around them and their love for flowers, the canvas that accompanied them from their journey to Kuala Lumpur from the sleepy town of Seremban was breathing, almost, with an allure of life.

The Ether, for Arman, is a space where they are able to whimsically turn aspects of their life into breathing entities, and ultimately, for them all to return to nature. The people around them would “live freely and the moon would be in a perpetual state of pink.”