Sarah Abu Bakar is a Malaysian art writer, curator and consultant based in Kuala Lumpur. She specialises in Malaysian art with a keen interest in Southeast Asian art, and her activities encompass cultural strategy in visual arts and collaborations with art professionals and collectors within the region.

Her unique position in the emerging art market began in 2012 when she worked as a specialist in Malaysia’s pioneering art auction house, Henry Butcher Art Auctioneers, until 2015.

In 2016, she worked at The Edge Galerie and The Edge Auction (a subsidiary of publishing company The Edge Media Group) until the gallery’s permanent closure in May 2019.

While at The Edge Galerie, she actively participated in exhibition programming, publishing, and sourcing artwork consignments for The Edge Auction under the leadership of her mentor, Johnni Wong. She was also a contributing writer for The Edge Malaysia and The Edge Singapore supplement, Options.

She co-authored Southeast Asian Art: Auction Benchmarks and Market Insights, published by The Edge Galerie and The Edge Media Group in 2018.

Between 2020 and 2023, she served the Malaysian visual arts community through cultural advocacy work with Cultural Economy Development Agency (CENDANA), a unit under MyCreative Ventures Sdn Bhd.

She led one of CENDANA’s Art In The City 2021 main programmes, Sensorium of Inversion/ Immersion (SENSORII), an immersive multimedia projection exhibition at REXKL, Kuala Lumpur. 

Her latest consultancy work includes Khazanah Nasional Berhad’s first virtual art gallery, Galeri Khazanah (www.galeri.khazanah.com.my), which launched in 2022.