Self portrait as King Abdullah of the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
2009
oil and enamel
1000mm x 1000mm
Highly Commended - National youth self-portrait prize, National portrait gallery Canberra
artist statement:
I am a seventh generation Australian with a direct paternal link to a convict who arrived in this country in 1815, and my name is Abdul Abdullah and I am a Muslim. Whilst my father’s side of the family has been here for generations my mother is Malay and as a result I do not look like a typical ‘Aussie’. I have trouble identifying with this nationalist marker and prefer to see myself as ethnically ambiguous with no inherent political or cultural standards to adhere to. I am an alien living in a colonial outpost and my struggle for definition seems quite apart from my neighbours. The title, King Abdullah of the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is a bastardisation of a term used to describe Japan’s World War II-era ambitions for a new East Asian geo-political order which, however brutal in reality, appeals to my intellectual sensibilities. ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere’… it sounds nice, doesn’t it?
artist statement:
I am a seventh generation Australian with a direct paternal link to a convict who arrived in this country in 1815, and my name is Abdul Abdullah and I am a Muslim. Whilst my father’s side of the family has been here for generations my mother is Malay and as a result I do not look like a typical ‘Aussie’. I have trouble identifying with this nationalist marker and prefer to see myself as ethnically ambiguous with no inherent political or cultural standards to adhere to. I am an alien living in a colonial outpost and my struggle for definition seems quite apart from my neighbours. The title, King Abdullah of the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is a bastardisation of a term used to describe Japan’s World War II-era ambitions for a new East Asian geo-political order which, however brutal in reality, appeals to my intellectual sensibilities. ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere’… it sounds nice, doesn’t it?
