Shafiq Nordin

Malaysian artist Shafiq Nordin was born in 1989, in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. Shafiq loves and is good at creating since he was a child. He was just 10 when he started drawing comics and cartoon characters on pages ripped out from of his school exercise books. His parents, in recognizing his interest and to prevent him from tearing more schoolbooks, got him his very own art supplies and began his art life. Shafiq majored in painting and got his degree in Fine Art, from UiTM Shah Alam, in 2012. 

Shafiq used the works of Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, and Yuko Shumizu as inspirations. Throughout the years of creating, the artist not only continuously transforms his creative style and connotation, but combines events happened around him and films which watched make Shafiq ’s art transform into the unique characteristics. Shafiq’s character likes an assortment of chimeras. Instead of producing paintings about the victims and casualties of geopolitical games, the artist go the other way in the style of surreal and fantasy world, and takes no prisoners when illustrating certain nefarious forces and their evil capitalist agendas as the skinless muscle-bounded beasts they are. 

The creation from Shafiq are painted to slightly resemble woodcut prints, the common medium used in proletarian political art. By doing so, it somehow provides Shafiq’s well-composed satire some sort of link to the political art of the past, especially the prints of German Expressionists. Using non-mainstream concepts and skills to create political and social issues, the relationship between the offender and the victim, Shafiq goes straight for the jugular, launching his scathing attacks on the issue he focus. Drawing specific attention to the monstrous nature of humanity’s imperialist ambitions and insatiable greed, the artist still believes that human relationship is the answer to solve the huge obstacles. With his own strong imagery, unique style, coarse outlines, interesting interpretation and well-composed satire, Shafiq Nordin is revered for conveying world issue and social phenomena.

Shafiq won Malaysia Emerging Artist Award in 2014, and make Shafik more well-known and popular in the contemporary art. This style awarded the artist a Young Gun Award in 2018 and made him a finalist of Bakat Muda Sezaman (BMS) in 2019. Shafiq’s installation for Bakat Muda Sezaman became part of a permanent collection in the National Art Gallery (Balai Seni Negara) Malaysia. The artist have explored beyond his community, by joining several international exhibitions and art fairs throughout Germany, Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, Istanbul and France. In 2021, Malaysian artist Shafiq Nordin will have the latest and the first international solo exhibition in GIN HUANG Gallery Taichung gallery.