Dr. Faisal Abdu’Allah is a Professor of Art and Faculty Director of UW-Madison’s Creative Arts Community, The Studio. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, and completed his PhD in 2012 at the University of East London. His work has been exhibited widely, including at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno in Gran Canaria (2012), National Portrait Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery (2009), British Film Institute Gallery (2008), Serpentine Gallery (2006), and the Chisenhale Gallery (2003) in London, and Studio Museum Harlem (1997). His works are in the collections of Tate Britain (London), the V&A (London), the National Maritime Museum (London), the Chazen Museum (Madison), CAAM (Gran Canaria) and the British Arts Council.
‘The two key concepts that hold Abdu’Allah’s work in place are reflection and return. The human subject for Abdu’Allah is either bewildered, traumatised, dead or resurrected. Physical and mental turbulence haunt his practice and photography as a tool for capture serves his desire to reframe the past and make tangible the present. As a collective body his practice amounts to an informal and personal interdisciplinary “institute of information” that works to challenge the academies of science, philosophy and the arts, grounded in an acute understanding of the seductive nature of the material world and moulded through ongoing enquiries into how the visual works upon and within the construction of difference… If the relationship between history and violence represents unending and uneven threads of knowledge, when these dynamics are woven together we are primed to consider Abdu’Allah’s works as signposts towards a new becoming, and a place of human celebration and healing.’ – Dr. Mark Sealy MBE
