Singapore

Zulkhairi Zulkiflee

Singapore

Zulkhairi Zulkiflee

3 April - 31 August 2023

Building upon his ongoing research into the tropes and evolving definitions of Malayness, Zulkhairi Zulkiflee plans to unpack the implications of the word “world” as it is commonly employed in Singaporean-Malay, tracing the complex socio-political implications that linger in the mixture of desires and tensions oriented towards global belonging.

In the Singaporean-Malay slang, “world” is used to signal boastful aspirations towards a social status higher than one’s own, often conveyed through self-aggrandising story-telling. Utilising this as an alternative framework to the postcolonial notion of “worlding”, whereby one’s conceptualisation of the world is devised through colonial attachments, the artist will spend his residency investigating the multitude of meanings behind the word’s usages as a way of unravelling sociolinguistic constructs and processes of identity formation. This research will ultimately result in lens-based explorations that engage with “world” through conceptual propositions and visual arrangements comprising archival photos and sociohistorical accounts. 

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Artist-in-Residence
Zulkhairi Zulkiflee
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