Abdullah M. I. Syed
Born in Karachi, Pakistan (1974)
Lives and works between Australia and Pakistan
Abdullah M. I. Syed’s interdisciplinary art practice champions the power of storytelling from a cross-cultural perspective. His Pakistani Muslim heritage, wide- ranging research interests focusing on arts and crafts, materiality, spirituality, nature, abstraction and the influences of his everyday experiences—lived outside and inside a diasporic space—all coalesce to create art forms of poetic resistance, which the artist terms manzoom muzahamat. Supporting ongoing conversations that seek to understand various power structures while bringing about social change and helping communities, Syed’s practice works at the intersection of drawing, sculpture, video, textile, photography, and performance. His current research highlights the economics of consumption, trade and resources, home and displacement and shared human history, vulnerability and resilience.
In a career spanning more than three decades, Syed has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto; Asian Society Museum, New York; Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua City; Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi; the National Art Gallery, Islamabad; and the Mohatta Palace Museum, Karachi; among other public and private venues. Past exhibitions include Unframing Sight: Transparency and Reflections, Penrith Regional Gallery, Penrith (2022); Common Threads Run Deep, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney (2021); Light upon Light, Aicon Contemporary, New York (2021); Substitute: The Untold Story of a Mother and Son, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, Sydney (2016); and Art Reserves Canvas Gallery, Karachi (2012).
Syed earned a Ph.D. in Art, Media, and Design (2015) from the University of New South Wales, Sydney. A member of eleven, a collective of contemporary Muslim Australian artists, curators, and writers, he has contributed reviews and articles to Southerly, TAASA Review, Imprint Australia, and Garland Magazine, received numerous prizes, such as the NAVA Carstairs Prize (2017) and the inaugural Individual Artists of Oklahoma (IAO) installation art award (2003), and undertaken several artist residences, including Parramatta Artists’ Studios (2012-2015), Blacktown Arts Centre (2012) and Artspace (2019). In 2022, Syed was awarded and completed public art commissions in Sydney for 5 Parramatta Square Civic Centre and the façade of Warwick Farm’s Commuter Car Park. Most recently, Syed has had a public mural added to the University of New South Wales 7th floor Library Mural, in the UNSW Alumni Art Collection and at the Australian Embassy, Washington D.C. USA in 2023.
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Abdullah M. I. Syed is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.
