Rhythms of Identity

Kunstpakhuset, Ikast, Denmark
27 September – 2 November 2025

Rhythms of Identity brings together a series of new works by Amir Zainorin that explore rhythm, color, mapping, and belonging through performance, installation, and painting. The exhibition traces how identity can shift between cultures, materials, and gestures — sometimes pulsing like sound, sometimes fading like memory.

At the center of the exhibition is the participatory installation Rhythms of Identity, featuring kompangs made from x-ray film. The instruments, first created in Melaka, Malaysia, were reactivated in a collective performance led by Amir’s son, Ilyas. During the opening, visitors were invited to play the x-ray kompangs together, filling the hall with spontaneous rhythm and transforming the personal act of remembering into a shared sonic experience.

Nearby, Color Theory stretches across the gallery walls in strips of watercolor-painted bandages. Each bandage bears fragments of text — phrases like “BBBBlack is ordinary”, “Yællow makes the world go round”, or “Violet don't ask me why” — drawn from made up words, overheard conversations and everyday speech. During the opening, the work expanded into a live performance of the poem Color Generation, read by Amir together with Brigitte Lyng Andersen and Didder Rye, with guitar accompaniment by Ilyas. The result was a layered dialogue between voice, sound, and color.

Cartologica hangs suspended in space — a constellation of circular forms made from atlas pages sewn with paper yarn onto cardboard. The work reimagines maps as fragile memory-objects, stitched together yet constantly shifting. Here, geography becomes a metaphor for displacement and connection — a visual rhythm of the artist’s movement between Malaysia, Denmark, and the United States.

Other works include Color Me Blinds and Less State of Mind, a neon installation that blinks between clarity and confusion; Camouflage for the Soul, a painting about disappearance and visibility; and To Rugbrød or Not to Rugbrød, a small, humorous reflection on adaptation, belonging, and the quiet politics of daily life.

Together, these works form a multi-sensory meditation on identity — not as something fixed or mastered, but as a living rhythm that keeps changing tempo.