It’s hard to pinpoint 34-year-old Rahman’s artistic style – he sees himself as a multitasking creator. His artworks also often exist only for a certain period of time, as he likes to use perishable and ephemeral materials – sometimes using himself as the artwork in his performance pieces. Much to the shock of visitors, he recently created a series of miniature flowers delicately crafted from flakes of his own dead skin, as well as a performance piece that involved him being enclosed in a glass-panelled room inhaling and ingesting mounds of talcum powder.
This experimental project at the Singapore Art Museum resulted in him winning the 2015 President’s Young Talents Award. On why she’s singled him out as an artist to know, our curator for this month’s Art & Design Issue Dawn Ng says: “I find his work haunting, pained and, most of all, grotesquely beautiful, and I love that inherent contradiction.”
Profile Photos Zaphs Zhang Art Direction Leyna Poh
An adapted version first appeared in Female’s January issue, out on newsstands now.
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