On the Threshold of Different Realms

Abstract

Abstract The motif of the mortal-spectral threshold runs through the practice of Singapore-based artist, Zarina Muhammad. Born Malay-Muslim, she identifies as a queer animist: her body of work is oriented around notions of the interstitial spaces that exist between the living and the otherworldly in Southeast Asian traditions, incorporating elements of ritual, magic, and the supernatural, poised in the discursive space between animist belief and monotheistic orthodoxy. It is the concept of spectrality, as an organizing metaphor, that provides the primary framework within which her installations and moving images are deciphered. Here, the ghostly and incorporeal are as much synonyms for the sphere of the spiritual and paranormal, as they are analogies for the socially other-ed and systematically marginalized, excluded by dominant ideologies and systems. In the context of the heteronormative, technocratic order and orthodox Islamic lifeworld of twenty-first century Singapore, Zarina’s intersecting identities as a queer, Malay-Muslim woman are read as apparitions of alterity, haunting the margins of hegemonic structures. The liminal site of the threshold signifies the spectral realms invoked in her work, and ultimately serves to metaphorize broader socio-cultural realities.