Organized five years after the artist’s death, A Tribute functioned as a posthumous survey that traced Kok Yew Puah’s unconventional career trajectory and his contributions to Malaysian figurative painting. With a foreword by Redza Piyadasa, the exhibition highlighted the distinct phases of Puah’s practice: his early 1970s roots in hard-edged, abstract printmaking following his studies in Melbourne, and his mid-career return to painting after a decade-long hiatus spent managing a family food-manufacturing business in Klang.The presentation framed Puah not as a static figure, but as one who navigated the friction between commercial obligations and creative vocation. His later works—characterized by representational social commentary and the use of a “camera-lens” framing device—were presented as a maturation of his early formalist concerns. By depicting middle-class life against the backdrop of industrial infrastructure, Puah acted as a chronicler of the psychic and physical shifts within a rapidly developing nation.