Abdul Abdullah at Art Basel Hong Kong 2019 Kabinett

13 Mar 2019

Yavuz Gallery is proud to announce its first participation at Art Basel Hong Kong’s Kabinett sector, with a solo presentation by critically-acclaimed artist Abdul Abdullah.

Titled The Waiting Room, the presentation is a mixed-media installation consisting of three monumental paintings and a realistic, life-sized sculpture.

In The Waiting Room, a creature sits alone on the end of a row chairs. It waits patiently, either the first to arrive or the last to leave – eager to participate despite being actively excluded. Simultaneously attractive and repulsive, and borrowing features from the endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, it stands in as a manifestation of the ‘monstrous other’. The artist sees the creature as a self-portrait: frozen and anticipating a journey yet to be embarked. The paintings on the walls point to the vastness and difficulty of the obstacles ahead. These scenes of raging seas are both meditative, and still oppressive – placing the audience in the same space as the creature that sits quietly in a liminal space between the places it left, and the place it hopes to go.

The Waiting Room is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, Australia.

Yavuz Gallery at Art Basel Hong Kong 2019
29 – 31 March 2019
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
Booth 1D32
Image: Superpredators, 2019, oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist and Yavuz Gallery