Overview of Research Projects
Oh My Malaya: If Postcards Could Sing
Moving Image and Sound Piece, 2026Oh My Malaya: If Postcards Could Sing is an experimental moving image composed of archival material including postcards and found sound.
Postcard production arrived in British Malaya in the late 19th century. It captured all aspects of life including architecture, trade, commerce, land, and people.
The postcards selected range from late 1800s-1950s.
The postal services were managed depending on the state’s status (Straits Settlements, Federated Malay States, Unfederated Malay States).
Screen Excerpts from Oh My Malaya: If Postcards Could Sing
Dammam: Weekends at Fuddruckers
Publication, 2021
Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s newest campaign devoted to diversifying the country’s dependency on oil, has been a blueprint for new reforms for women. Drawing on these changes, Zarifah explores the relationship between law and order and the construction of cultural values. Zarifah approaches Dammam: Weekends at Fuddruckers as a dialogue in understanding women’s positionality under patriarchal structures.
Spoken from the female gaze, the publication details the recollection of memory, childhood, and family in light of Saudi Arabia’s changing socio-political atmosphere. It takes the form of a visual letter and memoir, serving a critical reflection of the construction of women’s cultural identities. Zarifah’s work draws on the themes of gender segregation, patriarchy, and policy. It unpacks Zarifah’s fond memories of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, while reflecting on the accepted ideas, beliefs, and traditions that are passed on from generation to generation.
The work includes symbolic written text reminiscing memories of certain restaurants and routines that have been embarked on with Zarifah and her family. Some of the visuals found in the work includes original scans of objects that have been shipped to Zarifah by her family over the years. Together, the written and visual components of the work significantly build the visual setting of her life in Saudi Arabia. While there is comfort and nostalgia that sets the mood of the publication, there is also an embedded realisation of unpacking behind her childhood’s changing socio-political atmosphere.
Zarifah’s publication is accompanied by an in-depth Critical Report that dives deeper into the concepts of family structure in Saudi Arabian law, patriarchal responsibility, complexity of cultural identity, and unpacking the challenging lens on the structure women are raised in.
The concept of policy and the construction of cultural identity is explored through the research of the country’s lack of stability for immigrants and the role it plays in following law and order. Zarifah looks into the government’s infrastructure within Islamic contexts, using histories and theories, paralleling how it interplays with the new reforms and changes in the country. Zarifah’s research explores the history of patriarchy and changing times for Saudi Arabia, in contribution to the wider dialogue of how society integrates long standing tradition and values with change.
To understand the scope of the country’s socio-political atmosphere, she looks at family structure and its role in shaping culture and identity, particularly at patriarchy, male figure, and family law. Incorporating research on Islamic feminism and its relation to change in values, this helps framework the symbolism of the new reforms taking place in Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. This research project contributes to the understanding of governmental values and how it is implemented and integrated into culture and society.
Her research and work focuses on the cultural aspect of ideologies for the future to provide a nuanced approach in accepting new ideas and change into society.
Zarifah’s Critical Report can be sent to read via e-mail and access to the full publication is subject to availability upon request.
Scan Excerpts from Dammam: Weekends at Fuddruckers
Lost Culture
Moving Image and Sound Piece, 2021
Lost Culture (2021) is an in-depth body of documentary work in the form of video art. It explores the concept of a lost culture through nostalgia, identity, and migration. While Lost Culture (2021) focuses on Malaysia as an example of postcolonial societies, the work can resonate with an extended audience as it plays on many universal themes of humanity.
The work challenges cultural stereotypes and representations by revisiting colonial history, challenging the accountability and impact it has played on postcolonial societies. It frameworks memories of the past, heritage, history, and culture. This invites the broader audience to resonate and reflect on these visual elements. Zarifah’s approach creates an immersive space of unity, empathy, and understanding of cultural identities and migration.
Structured around Malaysia’s colonial history while condensing into the formation of cultural identity, the work is made up of archival material, speculative sound, music, and original narration. The narration takes place in the style of a manifesto, reflecting on facts, policies, promises, and motives. Combined with an eerie, speculative, and nationalistic soundtrack, Zarifah’s Lost Culture (2021) creates a visual lens into the nationalism and identity that makes up postcolonial Malaysia.
Lost Culture (2021) incorporates the poetic, reflective, yet critical framework found in video art that emerges viewers in Malaysia’s postcolonialism and culture through memory and nostalgia.
Behind the Research
This body of work is an extensive piece built upon many layers of visual communication. Zarifah’s research aims to reconstruct a new lens in viewing colonial history and its continued impact on today’s society. Lost Culture (2021) aims to decolonise Malaysia by revisiting its history and identity. It invites the viewer to emerge into time, critically reflect on the consequences of colonialism, and review our role in understanding it.
Video art has been a significant medium in contemporary art since the 1960s and became popular amongst exhibitors in the 1990s. It is known for its experimental space and ability to question, ponder, and critically think. The medium plays on human desire and sense of illusion in a viewer’s participatory setting. It allows viewers to resonate with the video’s universal themes of a lost culture and interchanging identity.
The use of archives in Lost Culture (2021) creates a space of memory and nostalgia, while reflecting on the institutional power of the archival footage. Most of the footage found had been from sources of British origin, notably the British Pathe. Some clips were originally intended for the British state’s archives, while others were a collection of personal documentation from the British gaze.
Acknowledging the origin of these clips enables this body of work to reconstruct and decolonise the lens in viewing them again in today’s day. It begins to reconstruct the origins of the archives, and suggests a newfound approach in decolonising marginalised cultures.
Zarifah’s work enables a visual mediation in beginning to understand the complexity of migration and culture. The nature of video work encourages viewers to contemplate the loss of a culture and identity, reframing the lens in which we view and understand postcolonial societies.
Screen Excerpts from Lost Culture
Covid-19
Moving Image and Essay, 2020COVID-19 (2020) is a film that chronicles the unfolding events of COVID-19 through the lens of the media. The film is constructed of a timeline dating from January 2020 to March 2020, providing a breakdown of the chronicling events. Zarifah examined and uncovered the harmful behaviors that emerged amidst the pandemic. This included accounts of discrimination, racist rhetoric, cultural superiority, scapegoating, attribution of blame, fearmongering, and antagonism as a result of misinformation and false ideologies.
Showcasing a collection of broadcast media and extracts of Donald Trump’s COVID-19 briefings, the use of cross-referencing helped articulate the discourse of news through Trump’s power as a politician, and how his ideologies were transmitted into broadcast media. The work goes on to cover the unfolding events of COVID-19 through lockdown around the world, strategically structuring the juxtaposition of broadcast media’s misleading information.
Zarifah’s film highlights the political responsibility behind these behaviors through the evidence of the US President and US Senator directly addressing China and Chinese culture to COVID-19, despite the history of identification of race in disease outbreaks. COVID-19 (2020) comprehensively examines the discourse of news and conceptualises the link to the harmful behavior resulting in it.
Behind the Research
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In addition to the fear and anxieties derived from the deadly disease itself, there have been a surplus of fear and anxiety regarding harmful behaviours socially in response to the outbreak.
The New Yorker (2020) details several accounts of these harmful behaviours. Some examples included a man spraying an Asian passenger with Febreze in New York City, a Vietnamese curator, An Nguyen, denied assistance with a gallery due to Asians being seen as carriers of the virus, and a Singaporean man who was attacked on a busy and popular London street. These harmful behaviours have emerged in response to COVID-19, but it is not a new occurrence.
In conjunction with the COVID-19 (2020) film, Zarifah has written a research paper that captures the relevant research that frames the harmful behaviors emerging.
The blame on China for COVID-19 is an example of many previous diseases that have been identified to specific races and nationalities. Zarifah incorporates the politics of risk and blame and the scapegoting theory, where the scapegoated group is found to serve a projection of blame, through the confinement of cultural taboos that further perpetuate their societal oppressions (Schild et al., 2020).
Zarifah’s research presents an array of key theories and concepts that helps frame the discourse of news and the transition from mass media to social media. The transition to social media then reflects on the public’s ideologies and attitudes derived from mainstream media. These ideologies were found to manifest on politicised witnessing, ‘othering’, racist rhetorics, Western hierarchy, scapegoating, attribution of blame, and antagonising China as a result of the misinformation and lack of control of COVID-19.
Zarifah’s research project pushes for the public to look beyond the realms and discourse of the media, and prioritise in education and fact checking, in avoidance of harmful behaviours towards already marginalised communities.
Her research paper can be viewed upon request.