About Amir Z
About
Amir Zainorin works across history, identity, language, and materiality through transmaterial processes. Developed outside traditional art education, the practice began as a personal process of healing and self-discovery and has since evolved into an open inquiry that resists fixed definitions and embraces layered ambiguity.
Shaped by questions of identity, diaspora, and migration, the work bridges personal memory and collective history. Born in Malaysia and based in Copenhagen since 2002, it unfolds between geographies, cultures, and lived experience. Everyday objects—passports, drums, maps, bandages, boots, and atlas pages—are transformed into installations and performances that question belonging, hybridity, and the instability of borders. Presented in Malaysia, Denmark, and internationally, the work connects Southeast Asian narratives with broader global contexts. Through humor, abstraction, and participation, it creates spaces where migration and cultural identity remain fluid and in motion.
Often beginning with familiar materials, the work allows them to operate not as static symbols but as shifting carriers of memory and experience. A passport becomes a marker of movement and exclusion. A drum constructed from X-rays resonates as a trace of the body. A boot planted with cactus and orchid speaks of contradictory belonging. Through subtle transformation, these objects are unsettled and reconfigured, inviting renewed encounters.
Rather than offering linear narratives, installations, performances, and sculptural configurations hold space for tension, contradiction, and quiet resistance. Meaning emerges through poetic abstraction, careful layering, and moments of humor—encouraging interpretation to remain open rather than resolved.
Ongoing projects such as Rhythm of Identity reflect a sustained interest in the intersections of sound, space, and storytelling. Alongside this practice, Zainorin initiated Jambatan, a platform for cross-cultural exchange, and Stateless Mind Pavilion, a mobile framework extending this inquiry into collective and dialogical forms. The work has been presented across Malaysia, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, and is held in the permanent collections of the National Art Gallery Malaysia and the Immigrant Museum Denmark.
Through transmaterial strategies, the practice resists singular readings—allowing meaning to surface through interaction, memory, and presence.
Curated exhibitions
2023: Calling it Home-Stateless Mind Festival-Copenhagen
2022: Pera+Flora+Fauna, Port Perak 59th Venice Biennale Collateral event, Italy
2022: Stateless Mind Festival, Archivi della Misericordia, Cannaregio, Venice, Italy
2021: Space Between-Stateless Mind Festival, Laterna Magica, Museum for Visuel Kunst Copenhagen
2019: Stateless Mind Festival, Sorte Firkant, Copenhagen
2019: Ipoh International Fim Festival, Ipoh, Malaysia
2019: Stateless Mind Festival, Laterna Magica, Museum for Visuel Kunst Copenhagen
2008: Malaysian Arts Festival, Gallery Shambala Copenhagen and Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde, Denmark
Awards and Grants
2023: One Year Working Grant- Danish art Foundation
2019: ‘Climate’, IPOH International Art Festival, Malaysia – Perak State Govt, Malaysia
2018: Mobility grant -SEA artist Research in the Nordic country - Nordic Culture Fund
2011: Production grant – Criss Cross ‘ at, Poetisk Bureau, Copenhagen- Danish Art Foundation
2011: Production grant -‘Generous Gestures’, Den Fri Contemporary Art- Danish Art Foundation
2010: Production grant for ‘X Box’, Performance Art at National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur- Danish Art Foundation
Two bodies, one movement.