Abdul Abdullah

Abdul Abdullah (born 1986) is a Sydney-based Australian multidisciplinary artist, the younger brother of Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, also an artist. Abdul Abdullah has been a finalist several times in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes. He creates provocative works that make political statements and query identity, in particular looking at being a Muslim in Australia, and examines the themes of alienation and othering.

Early life and education Born in Perth in 1986, Abdul Abdullah is the younger brother of artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (born 1977), who lives in rural Western Australia. Their mother is Malay, while their father is Anglo-Australian, and the family is Muslim.

Abdullah is a 7th-generation Australian on his father's side, whose ancestors arrived on the Indefatigable (a convict ship) 200 years ago. Two of his grandfathers fought in the Second World War in New Guinea.

Career In April 2015, the Art Gallery of Western Australia held a "WA Focus" exhibition featuring the work of both Abdul and Abdul-Rahman, in which both brothers express their experiences of growing up Muslim in Australia. For Abdul, nine years younger than Abdul-Rahman, the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 had a huge effect on him as a child, and has informed his art practice. His memories include witnessing a man tearing his mother's hijab from her head. His works at this exhibition included three collages of people wearing balaclavas over their heads, which had been created from photos of an eye each of Kanye and Beyoncé and the mouth of Madonna. The series was called Entertainers (Kanye, Beyoncé and Madonna), but that clue was missed by the people who wrote to The West Australian (which had featured an article on the exhibition and a photo of the brothers in front of the work) complaining that the art works promoted terrorism.

In February–March 2018, Abdullah's work was included in an exhibition co-curated by his brother Abdul-Rahman with Nur Shkembi, called Waqt al-tagheer: Time of change at ACE Open, Adelaide as part of the Adelaide Festival. The exhibition showcased the work of 11 Muslim Australian artists, including that of Abdul-Rahman and photographic artist Hoda Afshar. His works Journey to the West and Wedding (comprising two works, "Delegated Risk Management" and "Mutual Assurances") again explore the theme of identity, contrasting self-identity with the identity imposed by others.

His works for the touring exhibition Violent Salt (2019–2020), which featured many overtly political works by mostly Aboriginal Australian artists, were called All Let Us Rejoice and For We Are Young and Free, and featured Australian soldiers overlaid with smiley emojis. National Party MP George Christensen and a local councillor for Mackay took exception and complained about the artworks in Facebook posts, after which both Abdullah and the local gallery staff received threats, and the local mayor asked the gallery to remove the works. In June 2020, Abdullah participated in a project called 52 Actions at Artspace in Sydney, in which he documented his own text-based tattoos in a series of photographs, accompanied by a written piece explaining how each serves to remind him of his political principles. ).

Art practice and themes Abdullah works in painting, photography, video, installation and performance art.

Seeing himself as an "outsider amongst outsiders",

He also engages with other creatives throughout the Asia Pacific region,

He has encountered negative reactions to his work sometimes, but has also received positive responses for the same work, such as from military veterans for his Violent Salt works, which opened a discussion on the poor treatment of veterans.

Awards and recognition

In 2011 Abdullah won the Blake Prize for Human Justice, for his photographic self-portrait entitled "Them and Us" of himself and his brother, for which he especially got a tattoo of the Southern Cross placed around an Islamic crescent moon and star.

Abdullah was a finalist in the 2016 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship.

He has been finalist for the Sulman Prize five times.

In 2019 he won the inaugural Australian Muslim Artists Art Prize,

In 2021, Abdullah was awarded a Marten Bequest Scholarship.

A portrait of Abdullah by Jasper Knight was a finalist for the 2022 Archibald Prize.

In 2023, his work Legacy assets was selected as a finalist for the Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The work consisted of five panels of oil painting, creating a panorama stretching wide, depicting landscape near Berrima, NSW. Intended as "a critique of the historical role of colonial Australian landscape painters", the work has the question "What would our public collections look like if we divested them of sex pests and paedophiles?" written in large capital letters over it.

Collections Abdullah's works are represented in many significant galleries, including:

Artbank, a national art rental program Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, Victoria Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Islamic Museum of Australia, Melbourne Murdoch University, Perth Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney National Gallery of Australia, Canberra QAGOMA, Brisbane – Coming to terms (2015) University of Western Australia, Perth

Selected exhibitions His work has been included in many exhibitions, including: Primavera exhibition at the MCA, Sydney (2015) WA Focus, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (2015) Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2015) Asia Pacific Triennial at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane (2015) Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2016) Abdul Abdullah: Terms of Engagement (2017), a solo exhibition at the UNSW Galleries Pataka Art + Museum, New Zealand (2017) Art Basel Hong Kong (2017, 2019) Asia Now Art Fair, Paris (2017) MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiangmai, Thailand (2019) National Gallery of Australia, as part of Infinite Conversations (2019) Violent Salt, a touring exhibition (2019–2020) Adelaide Biennial (2020) The Armory Show, New York (2020), a solo exhibition, presented by Yavuz Gallery Gropius Bau, Berlin (2020) Land Abounds, Ngununggula, Bowral, New South Wales (2022)