Zaki Razak

The Night of more than a Thousand Months
is better than One Thousand and One Nights

Digital Print on Handloomed Carpet, 1.7m x 2.5m, 2019

Zaki graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a Masters in Fine Arts and holds a Diploma in Visual Communication from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. In 2004, his work was exhibited at the SENI exhibition at Singapore Art Museum. Since then, he has participated in many local and overseas exhibitions in Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and Australia. Zaki was also the associate artist (2012-2014) of The Substation’s Associate Artist Research Programmes, and an artist-in-residence (2006) at The Land Foundation in Chiang Mai, Thailand. In 2013, Zaki was recipient of the Young Artist Award, Singapore. Currently Zaki is a lecturer who teaches Contextual Studies (Art History), Creative and Critical Thinking and Digital Imaging in the School of Creative Industries and the School of Fine Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts.

An artist known for his installation-performances and collaborative approach towards art-making, Zaki’s practice involves investigations into human consciousness, the hermeneutics of art and its systems of circulation and reception. His interest in social languages and rituals also led him to create works that take advantage of everyday situations, subject them to wordplay and humour, and while implicating the audience through engaging their participation in the art-making process. Some of his notable works include Death of an Artist (2011) where he declared himself dead and engaged a lady to cry for his death, seVen: a wedding exhibition (2011) where he made his own wedding into a public exhibition of performances, and more recently his inaugural ‘solo’ exhibition, This is not my solo exhibition (2017) at Institute Contemporary Art Singapore where he turned the gallery into a notional home divided into three areas: a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom.