Still in Flight: Khairullah Rahim
‘Gathering of Flocks’ finds new directions
By Gillian Daniel
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Left: Khairullah Rahim, ‘Regular Intruder’, 2020, mixed media assemblage on wooden panel, panel size: 46 x 30.5cm, including assemblage: 104 x 49cm. Right: Khairullah Rahim, ‘In Unison’, 2020, mixed media assemblage on wooden panel, panel size: 46 x 30.5cm, including assemblage: 90 x 48cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Yavuz Gallery.
‘Gathering of Flocks’, the second solo exhibition by Singapore artist Khairullah Rahim at Yavuz Gallery, was slated to run from 28 March to 16 April, before it was unfortunately cut short on 7 April with Singapore’s Circuit Breaker in light of Covid-19. The exhibition extended from Khairullah’s explorations into the connections between communities and the objects surrounding them, a theme most recently present in his Singapore Biennale 2019 showcase. It featured a new body of works stemming from his observations of everyday life, following his move in 2018 to Boon Lay.
Khairullah observed that, like in many neighbourhoods in Singapore’s heartlands, the entrances of the homes in his new neighbourhood were marked by familiar household objects, like shoe racks, door stops and potted plants. Though these individual objects might be ordinary, the subtle distinctions in each household’s arrangement of objects imbues it with its own identity, allowing the artist to gradually develop a sense of familiarity with the neighbourhood’s cast of characters.
JC Jacinto, ‘Forced Passage 3’, 2020, molten plastic, natural and man-made detritus on wooden block. 22.9cm. Image courtesy of ArtInformal.
The resulting series displays Khairullah’s signature sensitive blend of beauty and kitsch. The majority of works comprise ten mixed media assemblages with forms that echo the Buddhist altars commonly seen outside Singaporean homes. The artist refers to them as “almost-altars”.1 Their visual language first appears to be abstraction that verges on the decorative. But the artist has invested significant time and effort to create assemblages that bear multiple layers of meaning. Closer scrutiny thus reveals that these works could be read as figurative portraits. The objects that the artist has collected around the neighbourhood, such as plastic combs and decorative embellishments like lace doilies and rhinestones, reveal the material realities of their households. First, there is their modest nature. Khairullah refers also to how their dense layering hints at the hoarding that sometimes takes place in vulnerable homes, where household objects might be amassed and kept for a rainy day.2 In this light, Khairullah’s abstract assemblages become an expression of the lived reality of a certain demographic of the city-state.
In the week since the abrupt end of ‘Gathering of the Flocks’, the pandemic’s asymmetrically devasting consequences on the less privileged have become apparent. Looking back, the seeming finality of the exhibition’s closure might thus feel prescient. But these flocks could still find an unexpected flight path yet. A request to participate in a yet-to-be-launched ‘zine led to an unplanned continuation of the Yavuz series. In response, Khairullah created three assemblages that he circumspectly calls “experimentations”, rather than “works”.3
Screengrab of Khairullah Rahim’s Instagram page taken 29 May 2020.
One of these, ‘Untitled, Lockdown Exercise 1’, debuted on his Instagram account on 28 April. The assemblage is a marked departure from its predecessors. Even with their nod to kitsch, the Yavuz works have a certain clean, finished beauty. This is accentuated by neat and regular, perhaps even reverent application of rhinestones and other found objects. These materials, arranged in largely symmetrical compositions, are carefully selected for their aesthetic appeal, with bright colours and high shine.
In stark contrast, the zine experimentation has an almost bedraggled appearance. The same rhinestones reappear, but this time in sparse patches, barely twinkling between scraps of paper and twisted rings of loo roll, roughly applied to distressed cardboard. These materials were again found in Khairullah’s surroundings, but in this case his bedroom, demonstrating the shrinking of the world that the pandemic has wrought upon us.
Khairullah speaks also to how these experimentations signify the different headspace he was in when producing them. After working at a relentless pace to produce the works in the solo exhibition, only to have the show close and the world around it draw itself into isolation, he was feeling drained and withdrawn.4 This manifests in the more personal feel of the later experimentations. The artist, better known as an observer of others, turns his lens on himself.
COVID-19 has shone a light on the unsustainable practices of the art world before the pandemic, from the dizzying pace of production to the carbon-intensive movement of goods and people that powers international art fairs, biennials and blockbuster exhibitions. As the art critic Jerry Saltz put it, “expansion and more were the answers to everything.”5 With the future uncertain, institutions and artists alike are searching for alternative ways of making and looking.6 Khairullah’s latest almost-altars to the present moment postulate potential new directions for his practice. Aside from looking inwards, the experimentations result in fresh interrogations into the medium of found objects. Where previous works feature procured ready-mades, the experimentations are a new avenue to make sense of discarded objects as possible materials.
Khairullah suggests that these experimentations, like himself, are “in limbo” and that it will still take time for their conceptual seeds to take root.7 But these quiet, less resolved experiments signify rich new potentialities for a practice that was already interesting to observe.
About the Writer
Gillian Daniel is Manager (Curatorial Programmes) at National Gallery Singapore. Her writing has appeared in The Business Times, Elephant Magazine, Blouin ArtInfo, Harper’s Bazaar and others. She is also the creator of the art and fashion Instagram @fashofthetitans, one of InStyle Magazine’s top 15 art Instagrams.
1 Rafi Abdullah, Conversation with Khairullah Rahim and Ahmad Abu Bakar (2020), Yavuz Gallery.
2 Ibid.
3 Text Conversation with Khairullah Rahim, 18 May 2020.
4 Ibid.
5 Jerry Saltz, “The Last Days of the Art World … and Perhaps the First Days of a New One”, Vulture, 2 April 2020, https://www.vulture.com/2020/04/how-the-coronavirus-will-transform-the-art-world.html
6 Andrew Dickson, “Bye bye, blockbusters: can the art world adapt to Covid-19?”, The Guardian, 20 April 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/apr/20/art-world-coronavirus-pandemic-online-artists-galleries
7 Text Conversation with Khairullah Rahim, 18 May 2020.
