Faces and figures play a big role in Aely Manaf’s art – thick impastoes, splotchy, blurry and fuzzy, so as to dissemble forms and make identity and identification difficult. One can say he deliberately makes the subject look ugly, but it is also to create emotional states about the human condition rather than something about say, nafsu (desire), or about human idolatory, which is discouraged in Islam. Sometimes, one is tempted to ask, Does ‘camouflage’ or ‘cover-up’ make something more ‘desirable’ because of the piqued curiosity or the showing of a thing in all its natural state end all the mystery and questioning nature? Whose ‘responsibility’ is it, the one revealing or the one perceiving what it was is being revealed, and how? Aely Manaf is noted for his disfigured human faces. His colour play could be linked to his being a purveyor of painting colour products. He became noticed in 2013 when his work, Exclaimation Points, won the US$1,000 Bronze Medal in the UOB Painting of the Year under the ‘Emerging Artist’ category. Prior to that, he has taken part in group exhibitions like the Young and New Part III (2011) and IV (2012) at HOM Art Trans, and in other exhibitions in contemporary art spaces like Core Design Gallery (2012) and G13 (20@G13, 2013).