ABDUL ABDULLAH

__Renowned for his work that interrogates otherness, displacement and identity, Abdullah’s approach is always shifting as it is compelling, from vivid self-portraits to thought-provoking public installations and anthropomorphised caricatures.

Witness debuts a new series that expands on Abdullah’s two critical explorations: the tensions between perception of a person or group and the realities of their lived experience; and of the boundaries and the physical, geographical, political, and spiritual metamorphoses we undergo as we journey across them.

In these works, Abdullah examines how we transpose simplified archetypal myths onto complex historical personal narratives as we peer into one’s daily, internal battle with their own conflicts and competing values. Throughout his new paintings on linen and with LED, Abdullah debuts a new anthropomorphised motif: a cat sitting upon or walking beside a horse in a fantastical landscape.

Interested in the significance of cats, horses, and other domesticated animals in fiction, Abdullah explores how they have been used to represent and be placeholders for otherwise human characteristics, and in some cases, narrates for an unseen audience. As the artist explains, ‘I imagined these animals that often live beside us and among us as vessels for our human projections, and also witnesses to what we do.’ He continues, ‘I see us as both creatures, where one is the Id, and one is the Super Ego, or one is the voice of doubt or caution, and the other the force of purpose.’