Shakira Zulaikha Binte Zaibaktian
About
Shakira's developing practice works across conceptual image-making, performance and digital mediums to examine personal and collective realities.
Through a series of reflective and playful commentary, Shakira's practice is a continued investigation into the evolution of self, femininity and cultural hybridity. Her work examines personal subjectivities of the Malay-Muslim experience and girlhood.
At present, her research borrows from global pop culture and media to investigate the multiplicities of identity through self-expression and social perceptions.
Video still from (ki)
(ki) / today, i want to be a..!
(ki) emerges as the artist's persona, caught between faith and fandom—where cosplay is reframed as both a form of creative self-expression and cultural critique.
Costuming, gesture and presence become tools to examine how identity is negotiated and performed. Informed by the artist's unique position as a Malay-Muslim individual, the work questions the tensions and possibilities of cultural hybridity.
This project extends from the today, i want to be a..! series which explores how inherited cultural values and contemporary influences intersect. With this, (ki) confronts generational perceptions and mediates interactions within family and the self. The work invites viewers to consider identity as something continuously contested and reimagined, reflecting on what is resisted or quietly reshaped.
Video still from (ki)
Nur Ashserina
Tong Winona I
Neo Weiqi
Natalie Savann Oh
Nehal Agarwal
Tanika Gupta
