Abdul Abdullah

Abdul Abdullah (b. 1986, Boorloo Perth, Western Australia, l. Gadigal Country, Sydney) is a multidisciplinary artist and a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design (2017).  As a self-described ‘outsider amongst outsiders’ with a post 9/11 mindset, his practice is primarily concerned with the experience of the ‘other’. Abdullah’s projects have engaged with different marginalized minority groups and he is particularly interested in the disjuncture between perception/projection of identity and the reality of lived experience. Identifying as a Muslim and having both Malay/Indonesian and convict/settler Australian heritage, Abdullah occupies a precarious space in the political discourse that puts him at odds with popular definitions. He sees himself as an artist working in the peripheries of a peripheral city, in a peripheral country, orbiting a world on the brink. His work has been censored by politicians who have accused him of attacking Australian culture, and once a member of the Christian Democratic party wrote that he wants to “convert young Australians” and that he “worships a moon god”.