There is something interesting about asking an artist what they are currently working on, only to receive an answer that is not entirely about the work.
“I’m currently working on something random, a dialogue in my mind.”
For Nor Tijan Firdaus, perhaps that dialogue is the work for now.
Throughout our conversation, one phrase kept appearing: what’s next?
It sounds like a simple question. As artists, we ask ourselves this all the time. After finishing one body of work, one exhibition, one project, naturally we start thinking about the next one. But for Tijan, the question seems to have become something heavier.
“What’s next?” is no longer simply about the next artwork.
It is about relevance. Rejection. Audience. Whether people are still interested. Whether what you are making still matters. And perhaps, somewhere in between all of that, whether you still understand where your own practice is going.
Tijan admits that lately, her process has become one of overthinking.
Her ideas have always come from relatively ordinary things: observation, conversations, reading, walking and listening. These are things that many artists probably understand. You move through life, something catches your attention, it stays somewhere in your head, and eventually it finds its way into the work.
But lately, she feels that these methods do not work the same way anymore.
“When it comes to the ‘next’, I always ask myself, ‘What’s next?’”
She knows something is there. She just cannot visualise it yet.
I find this particularly interesting because we often talk about an artist’s practice through what we can see. The finished artwork. The exhibition. The new series. The development from one body of work to another. We rarely talk about that strange period in between, when an artist knows something is changing but does not yet know what that change looks like.
Maybe Tijan is currently somewhere there.
And perhaps this explains why, when I asked whether a work had ever become completely different from her original intention, her answer returned to the same uncertainty.
“This is somehow what I’m working on right now. And even these interview questions suddenly feel difficult for me to answer. Maybe because I’m also trying to understand what my work is becoming.”
There is something very human about that answer.
Because sometimes making art is not about having something to say. Sometimes it is about trying to understand what you are trying to say in the first place.
For those familiar with Tijan’s practice, her works have often dealt with consumption and waste. But she is careful about how this is understood. She does not consider herself anti-consumerist, nor is she asking people to stop consuming altogether.
Instead, her concern is about awareness.
Once something enters our house, where does it go next?
That question — interestingly, another question of “next” — opens a much larger conversation. We buy something. We use it. We throw it away. But throwing something away does not mean it disappears.
Eventually, where does it end up?
Does it return to the land?
There is a cycle within Tijan’s thinking about consumption that goes beyond simply criticising consumer culture. It asks us to pay attention to our relationship with objects and to what happens after those objects stop being useful to us.
Perhaps that is also why everyday life remains important to her.
Outside of art, Tijan says her inspiration mostly comes from life itself: family, people around her, conversations and ordinary things that sometimes stay in her mind without her immediately realising their significance.
Her normal day is similarly divided between family, work and art. When there is time for the studio, she can spend hours working. Some days are productive. Other days are simply for thinking and planning.
And I think we sometimes underestimate those days.
We tend to associate being an artist with production. You should always be making something. There should always be a new work, a new exhibition, a new achievement, a new announcement.
Something next.
Maybe this pressure becomes even more obvious when Tijan talks about younger artists.
“I think many young artists focus too much on being noticed, as I once did too.”
But over time, her thinking has shifted. Rather than constantly chasing visibility, she believes it is more important for artists to find themselves within their practice and continue making work, even when nobody seems to be paying attention yet.
I think there is a certain irony here.
Because even after years of practice, questions of relevance and audience do not necessarily disappear. Tijan herself admits that they still linger in her mind. Perhaps experience does not make an artist immune to doubt. Maybe you simply become more aware of it.
When I asked whether there was a particular moment, place or encounter that changed the direction of her practice, Tijan could not identify one.
She simply kept working.
And somewhere along the way, the work changed.
“I was just following what felt right at that time, and somehow the direction changed along the way.”
Maybe that is worth remembering, especially when we become too obsessed with knowing exactly where our practice is heading.
Not every change announces itself.
Sometimes you only recognise it much later, when you look back and realise you are already somewhere different.
So naturally, the final question I asked Tijan was:
What’s next?
Quite a fitting question, considering everything that came before it.
Her answer was simple.
“Honestly, I don’t know yet. And maybe, for now, not knowing is also part of the process.”
Perhaps that is where Tijan needs to be at this moment.
Not every artist needs to immediately know what comes next. Not every period of uncertainty needs to be solved by producing another body of work.
Sometimes there is something between one work and another. A pause. A conversation in your own mind. A period where things have not taken shape yet.
And perhaps, instead of constantly asking what’s next?, there are moments when an artist needs to allow themselves to simply not know.
At least for a while.
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