Coming Show (updated entry)-X-Ray Kompang-Rhythms of Identity

Coming Show (updated entry)

X-Ray Kompang-Rhythms of Identity
Solo Exhibition — Kunstpakhuset, Ikast, Denmark
27 September – 2 November 2025
Opening: 27 September, 13:00–16:00
Artist Talk: 2 November, 14:00

Visitor Information

For Danish visitor details, please see Kunstpakhuset’s official exhibition page:
👉 Kunstpakhuset: X-RAY KOMPANG — Rhythms of Identity

Introduction

"His works propose a semiotics of statelessness, inviting us to communicate otherwise, across simultaneous yet divergent signifying systems."
— Dalida María Benfield, CADSR

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In this solo exhibition, Amir Zainorin explores identity as a shifting, unfinished process shaped by migration, memory, and cultural history. With installations made from X-ray film, old maps, drums, bandages, and worn boots, he creates poetic assemblages that open new systems of meaning — both personal and political.

 

 

Press Release (Kunstpakhuset, Danish)

X-RAY KOMPANG: RHYTHMS OF IDENTITY

 LILLE TORV 5, 7430 IKAST
 WWW.KUNSTPAKHUSET.DK
Ikast, d. 3. september 2025

PRESSEMEDDELELSE

Udstilling

X-RAY KOMPANG: RHYTHM OF IDENTITY

af kunstner Amir Zainorin

Fernisering: lørdag, d. 27.september 2025 kl.13 – 16  

Udstillingsperiode: d. 27.september - 2.november 2025

Artist Talk: d. 2.november kl.14

Åbningstid: torsdag – søndag, kl.12 - 16

Hvordan formes vi af steder, vi kalder hjem – og af dem, vi har forladt? I udstillingen X-RAY KOMPANG: RHYTHMS OF IDENTITY undersøger Amir Zainorin i sin kunstnerisk praksis identitet, som forstås som noget bevægeligt, modsætningsfyldt og uafsluttet. Med afsæt i sit liv mellem Malaysia og Danmark undersøger kunstneren gennem installationer forskydning og forankring, personlig hukommelse og kulturel historie.

De anvendte materialer i kunstværkerne præcis indkoder narrativen, som kunstneren ønsker at udtrykke. I sine værker anvender han materialer: slidte læderstøvler, røntgenfilm, gamle verdenskort, farvede bandager, trommer, som er tæt på kroppen og biografien, som i Zainorins hænder bliver åbne systemer for betydning både personlige og politiske.

Panamansk-amerikansk mediekunstner, forsker og forfatter Dalida María Benfield skriver om Amir Zainorin: ”Kunstneren og kuratoren Amir Zainorin er en arrangør af verdener. Hans proces med at organisere mennesker, materialer og erkendelsesformer kan forstås som ontologisk bricolage. Den finder sted i den virkelige tid og rum. (..) Intet objekt eller materiale er placeret som vigtigere end andre. Dermed opstår et radikalt horisontalt forhold til tegn. Blandingen af materialer efterligner blandingen af de kulturelle og politiske praksisser, som Amir er engageret i. Dette er overlevelsespraksisser. De er de nødvendige navigationer for en vandrende sjæl.

Hvad er invitationen til os? I modsætning til kunstværker, der sidder stille, tavse, og venter på vores respons, med vores lige så mekaniske tilskuerrolle som afslutning, beder disse værker/arrangementer os om at blive endnu et materiale i assemblagen; endnu en tekst eller et objekt; en essentiel komponent i deres potentielle meningsskabelse og relationsopbygning. Vi er ikke her for at fuldende sætningen, selv hvis den kun var vores egen. Snarere opstår en kakofoni af vores tilstedeværelser – kompleks, endnu ikke forstået. Den er uorkestreret, rodet, men alligevel lærdomsrig og harmonisk, selv hvis det blot betyder lyden af en dåse, der sparkes ned ad gaden en stille nat i København, som ekko af en erindring om et andet sted og en anden tid. Eller at holde en pande foran vores ansigter og kalde os selv kosmos. Eller at kalde mine støvler et sted til at dyrke en have, med konsekvenser af liv eller død. Materialernes alkymi, sommerfuglenes vinger, betydningernes åbne himmel – alt dette er virkeligt. Til syvende og sidst er det faktisk autenticiteten, som praksis og ethos, der skaber vores fælles oplevelse af disse engagementer som gæstfrihed for vandrende sjæle.”

X-RAY KOMPANG: RHYTHMS OF IDENTITY er ikke blot en udstilling, men en form for eksistentielt laboratorium. Den er en rytmisk undersøgelse af, hvordan vi er i verden, og hvordan vi genopfinder os selv i mødet med dens systemer: sprog, grænser, farver og lyde. Gennem modsætninger og stille modstand skaber Amir Zainorin en poetisk praksis, hvor identitet ikke er noget, man har – men noget, man gør.

 

Biografi

Amir Zainorin (født i 1963 i Johor, Malaysia) er en tværdisciplinær kunstner baseret i København siden 2002. Hans praksis omfatter installation, performance, collage, video og deltagerbaserede projekter, hvor han undersøger temaer som migration, identitet, hukommelse og tilhørsforhold. Han har udstillet bredt i Asien og Europa, og er initiativtager til kollektivet Jambatan, der skaber forbindelser mellem Malaysia og Danmark. Udover sin egen kunstneriske praksis har han kurateret projekter som Stateless Mind Festival (2019, 2021, København) og været involveret i Venedigbiennalen (2022) som del af collateral-programmet Pera+Flora+Fauna.

 

Til redaktionen/skribenter:
Der vil være mulighed for at møde Amir Zainorin den 26.september i Kunstpakhuset under udstillingsopsætningen. Aftal venligst tid for evt. møde med kunstnerisk leder.

 

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Curatorial Essay (Dalida María Benfield, English)

Arranging Worlds for Wandering Souls: Amir Zainorin

Arranging Worlds for Wandering Souls: Amir Zainorin

Dalida María Benfield

 

The artist and curator Amir Zainorin is an arranger of worlds. His process of organizing people, materials, and epistemes can be understood as ontological bricolage. It takes place in real space and time. He is not a poseur; he is not pretending to be playful, fearless, and a border crosser. He lives those qualities. These constitute an ethos, lived with integrity and accountability: For whom? Why? Towards what? Who will benefit? What will we all learn from this? (And this "all" includes Amir, who appears on the scene in camouflage; incognito; humble.)

That humility should feel heroic is a sign of the times.

In a moment at which all are announcing, pronouncing, and denouncing, what might it mean to arrive unannounced? Not arguing for oneself, or for one's cultural and political project? Not denouncing anyone, but simply making an Other proposal. This kind of, not subterfuge, but entry through a side door, is how we should greet Amir's offerings. They do not insist on taking center stage in our attention economy, but ask us to see from the corners of our own eyes and souls. They ask us to embrace sensing and non-sensing. This stateless mind enacts pluriversal route making. As he re-arranges worlds, through materials and languages, so he re-arranges purpose–ours and them, these texts–causing us to ask: Where does knowledge reside? What grounds us? On what ground(s) do we want to stand, or think?

Through his destabilizing of sense, and ground, he draws attention to our unique specificities, with loving humour. We–all human and other-than-human beings–become the subjects/objects of the work. The mixed media of his assemblages signals this mix and its porosities. The paradigmatic arrangements (stacking, substituting this for that, and other layerings) and syntagmatic sequencing (montage, chains, lines) of signs, whether these texts are images, sounds, found materials, everyday objects, or words, propose a semiotics of statelessness. This is an invitation to communicate otherwise, across simultaneous yet divergent signifying systems, produced with love and a critical engagement with contemporary social conditions.

Threading through all of these instances of disoriented meaning-making is an obsession with light. Here, I mean light as luminescence in a picture; but also illumination, spiritually speaking. What else does "illumination" mean? It also means to thoroughly explain a topic or situation. "Illumination" has multiple reference points, culturally and philosophically. All of these are relevant to the work. It may also mean the illuminated state of acceptance of not-knowing; for example, of allowing oneself to freely be in the constant flow and seemingly endless slipstream of signs of contemporary mediated and digital life. In this sense, in the work of Amir Zainorin, we see a reaching out and grasping at straws, finding needles in haystacks, or grabbing a life preserver as one bobs and struggles in the currents. One accidentally encounters flotsam and jetsam as one floats, or finds, with curious passion, what is on the beach when one has washed ashore.

Let us open ourselves to the numerous entry points of this detritus. This multimedia, and multi-directional, practice that gathers and arranges enacts and invigorates pluriversal thinking and doing. No object or material is positioned to be more important than others. Thus a radically horizontal relationship to signs is produced. The mix of materials mimics the mix of the cultural and political practices with which Amir is engaged. These are practices of survival. They are the necessary navigations of a wandering soul.

What is the invitation to us? Unlike artworks that sit silently, mute, awaiting our response, with our equally rote spectatorship as closure, these works/arrangements ask us to become another material in the assemblage; another text or object; an essential component of their potential meaning-making and relationship building. We are not here to complete the sentence, even if it were to be only ours. Rather, a cacophony of our presences, complex, not-yet-understood, results. It is un-orchestrated, messy, yet erudite and harmonious, even if that only means the sound of kicking a can down the street on a quiet night in Copenhagen, echoing a memory of another place and time. Or putting a pan in front of our faces, calling ourselves the cosmos. Or calling my boots a place to grow a garden, with life or death consequences. The alchemy of materials, the wings of the butterflies, the open sky of meanings, are real. In the end, in fact, it is authenticity, as practice and ethos, that produces our shared experience of these engagements as hospitality for wandering souls. 

 

August 19, 2025

Helsinki, Finland 

 

Dalida María Benfield, Ph.D., is a writer, curator, and artist based in Helsinki and Boston. She is the co-founder of the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research.

 

Cartologica aka The World in Nyiru, 2025, cardboard, atlas pages, mirror, acrylic film, threads, motor.

 

Color Theory, 2025, bandages, ink.

 

Do or Die – From the Boot-ed series, 2025, leather boots, cactus, orchid, atlas-covered shoeboxes, mirror. Do or Die – From the Boot-ed series, 2025, leather boots, cactus, orchid, atlas-covered shoeboxes, mirror.

 

Artist Bio

Amir Zainorin (b. 1963, Johor, Malaysia) is a Copenhagen-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans installation, performance, collage, video, and participatory projects. His work explores migration, identity, memory, and belonging. He has exhibited widely in Asia and Europe and is the initiator of Jambatan, a collective that builds connections between Malaysia and Denmark. He curated the Stateless Mind Festival (2019-2023), Copenhagen), curated in the Venice Biennale collateral program Pera+Flora+Fauna (2022).

 

Press Kit & Links

📄 Download Press Release (Danish, PDF)

📄 Download Curatorial Essay (English, PDF)

 

For visitor info in Danish:
👉 Kunstpakhuset: X-RAY KOMPANG — Rhythms of Identity