Teenage memories remain. While walking home with a friend, artist Silas Oo, then 17, witnessed a sudden death – an experience that has since shaped his understanding of life’s fragility and death’s reality.

“There was a cat waiting by the roadside, which at the time was completely empty. It didn’t try to cross. It just kept looking right to left, right to left, as though waiting for something,” recalls Oo.

That “something” arrived in the form of a speeding motorcycle. “The moment it saw the motorcycle coming, for some strange reason, that was when it chose to move. Against the metal and machinery, it didn’t stand a chance,” he adds.

The long-ago memory has stayed with Oo, resurfacing in his first solo exhibition Roadkill, now showing at The Back Room gallery in Kuala Lumpur's Zhongshan Building until June 7.

As the title suggests, Oo turns to a familiar part of urban life – fleeting glimpses of animals caught in the aftermath of modernity, moments most people instinctively look away from.

At The Back Room, Roadkill presents 10 black-and-white fine-line drawings of animals struck on the road – birds, insects, rodents and more – on paper, framed in custom acrylic and wood mounts.

There is no blood or gore. Instead, Oo, 30, reimagines their internal forms as collages of car parts, fusing machine and animal into hybrid compositions.

“For the show, I wanted to express the anxiety and existential questions I’ve been living with. Drawing these works became a way to process and release that trauma – similar to how some people journal,” shares the artist known for exploring fear and death in his practice.

The duality of being

As a child, Oo, who is based in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, was drawn to science, animals and cartoons and comics such as Transformers and Calvin And Hobbes. The affable artist has not looked back since his days of sketching.

Oo’s earlier ink-on-paper works and sculptures have helped build his profile and generate attention in the art scene, including through his online persona, “Robot in Pyjamas”.

A fine arts graduate from KL, Oo has moved steadily through the gallery circuit, taking part in group exhibitions, design fairs, magazine features and modelling work.

In December 2023, Oo reached a wider audience through the National Art Gallery’s Bakat Muda Sezaman (Young Contemporaries) competition, presenting Return To Form – an installation with a philosophical bent, exploring anatomical distortion and deformation through metal forms wrapped in a layer of synthetic skin.

“It’s interesting how I’ve blended my childhood interests, but I’m actually quite squeamish when I encounter dead animals in real life,” he says with a chuckle.

In its fusion of the living and the mechanical, the new series Roadkill draws together themes Oo has long explored. In Swallow (2024), he created dental-themed drawings for Cult Gallery, and last year, after a residency at Hin Bus Depot in George Town, Penang he presented works that navigated heritage, ambition and identity through discarded car parts and traditional ceramic tiles.

“For me, these works are a reminder that every choice has consequences. The past few years, I’ve been in survival mode, as if the ground could give way at any moment,” says Oo.

“That life-or-death instinct may mirror what animals feel in their final seconds. But there’s also the other side – being the driver moving fast, focused only on where he’s going, and the collateral damage that can come with it,” he adds.

Oo admits he was unsure how audiences would respond to the works, but is satisfied with the outcome, calling it a natural step forward in his practice.

“Roadkill is a reflection of all my life’s questions. I put off a solo show for a long time because I didn’t feel ready. Looking back, I realise I had been slowly improving on the small things that once made me insecure, and I’m glad I took the time to reach this point,” he says.

An admirer of natural history museums, Oo also wanted the exhibition to carry a similar atmosphere.

“Reality is texture – the more you zoom in, the more detail you see. But some reference images I used were pixelated, so I carried that into the works, giving them the feel of a blurred memory – something preserved in a museum, or something glimpsed too quickly while driving past.”

Beyond black and white

For Oo, drawing remains his most familiar medium. In school, he often kept to himself, channelling his imagination into sketchbooks.

For those who have seen his practice evolve, his ink work occasionally draws on pop culture and also finds a balance with the idea of the ecorche – a figure showing the body without skin to reveal its musculature for artistic or anatomical study.

“I feel like drawing is my way of communicating with the world – I can draw better than I can talk. It was isolating, but it helped me develop a visual language,” he says.

Much of his work is in black and white, a choice shaped in part by an unexpected factor: he is colourblind.

“I do think in colour, but black and white best represent my thoughts. When I look at something, I don’t think about colour – I think about texture, layers, lighting, all the small details,” he explains.

He only returned to drawing more consistently in recent years, after stepping away to explore sculpture and welding.

“I’ve tried different ways of living, trying to grow into my own skin. An artist who only draws but doesn’t live has nothing to draw,” says Oo.

“I’m still finding that balance, but I’m driven by making work I can relate to – work that reflects who I am at a given moment,” he concludes.

Roadkill is showing at The Back Room, Zhongshan Building in KL until June 7. Open: Wednesday to Sunday. Free admission. More info: thebackroomkl.com.