Zarina Muhammad
Dublin Core
Title
Zarina Muhammad
Description
Cycle 6 Residency (2019)
For the past decade, Zarina Muhammad has embarked on a multidisciplinary research that explores magico-religious belief systems, ritual practices, and sacred sites. The various embodiments of her work, which engage broader contexts of myth-making, ritual magic, gender-based archetypes, and spirits of resistance, frame the cultural biographies of objects and the region’s provisional relationship to mysticism and the immaterial against the dynamics of global modernity. Her research project for the residency takes the trans-local figures of the penunggu (tutelary spirit) and the tuan/puan tanah (Lord of the Land) as points of departure to reconsider notions of territoriality and spectrality against the social production of rationality. During the residency, she will focus on mapping old and new ways to tell stories of unresolved memories, fragmented cosmologies, shapeshifting translations, and haunted histories.
STAR Residencies Cycle 1 (2025 - 2016)
Embracing a constellatory and process-led approach in her collaboration with multiple researchers at NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), Zarina Muhammad dedicates STAR RESIDENCY to further her engagement with hybrid forms of ecological witnessing and polycosmologies as well as her exploration of the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems. The artist intends to conduct fieldwork on selected sites where geological and ecological significance resonate with underwater cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems, seeking points of convergence with EOS’s work in monitoring and addressing the regional impact of climate change. By exploring remote-sensing techniques and data translations through creative and empirical processes, this research hopes to expand the epistemic frameworks of nonhuman witnessing in the context of environmental crisis. The artist plans to expand her collaborative practice through interdisciplinary exchange, convening scientists, artists, storytellers, and ancestral knowledge keepers to develop speculative maps and multi-layered cartographies inspired by the complexity of environmental data, ecological processes, and trans-indigenous cosmologies.
For the past decade, Zarina Muhammad has embarked on a multidisciplinary research that explores magico-religious belief systems, ritual practices, and sacred sites. The various embodiments of her work, which engage broader contexts of myth-making, ritual magic, gender-based archetypes, and spirits of resistance, frame the cultural biographies of objects and the region’s provisional relationship to mysticism and the immaterial against the dynamics of global modernity. Her research project for the residency takes the trans-local figures of the penunggu (tutelary spirit) and the tuan/puan tanah (Lord of the Land) as points of departure to reconsider notions of territoriality and spectrality against the social production of rationality. During the residency, she will focus on mapping old and new ways to tell stories of unresolved memories, fragmented cosmologies, shapeshifting translations, and haunted histories.
STAR Residencies Cycle 1 (2025 - 2016)
Embracing a constellatory and process-led approach in her collaboration with multiple researchers at NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), Zarina Muhammad dedicates STAR RESIDENCY to further her engagement with hybrid forms of ecological witnessing and polycosmologies as well as her exploration of the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems. The artist intends to conduct fieldwork on selected sites where geological and ecological significance resonate with underwater cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems, seeking points of convergence with EOS’s work in monitoring and addressing the regional impact of climate change. By exploring remote-sensing techniques and data translations through creative and empirical processes, this research hopes to expand the epistemic frameworks of nonhuman witnessing in the context of environmental crisis. The artist plans to expand her collaborative practice through interdisciplinary exchange, convening scientists, artists, storytellers, and ancestral knowledge keepers to develop speculative maps and multi-layered cartographies inspired by the complexity of environmental data, ecological processes, and trans-indigenous cosmologies.
Date
1 April – 27 September 2019
15 April 2025 - 31 March 2026
Contributor
Coverage
Residency Item Type Metadata
Short Description
For Cycle 6 residency, Zarina focused on mapping old and new ways to tell stories of unresolved memories, fragmented cosmologies, shapeshifting translations, and haunted histories.
Zarina Muhammad dedicates STAR RESIDENCY to further her engagement with hybrid forms of ecological witnessing and polycosmologies as well as her exploration of the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems.
Zarina Muhammad dedicates STAR RESIDENCY to further her engagement with hybrid forms of ecological witnessing and polycosmologies as well as her exploration of the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems.
Location
Onsite (CCA)
Collaboration
Yes
Commissioned Work
Yes
Files
Collection
Citation
“Zarina Muhammad,” NTU CCA Singapore Digital Archive, accessed September 10, 2026, https://ntuccasingapore.omeka.net/items/show/1402.
Item Relations
| This Item | Is Part Of | Item: Residencies OPEN (in conjunction with Art After Dark) |
| This Item | Is Part Of | Item: STAR Residencies: Propositions for Planetary Attunement - Highlights |
| This Item | Is Part Of | Item: STAR Residencies Cycle 1: Insights |
| This Item | Is Part Of | Item: Situated Sensing: Relational Ecologies and Nature-Based Solutions |
| This Item | Is Part Of | Item: Launch of STAR Residencies (2025 - 2026) |
| Item: Residencies Studio Sessions: Revisiting the Penunggu* and the Demon Naga at the Threshold by Zarina Muhammad | Is Part Of | This Item |
| Item: Zarina Muhammad | References | This Item |
| Item: STAR Residencies Open | Is Part Of | This Item |
| Item: Ecological Witnessing: Geology as Archive, Microatolls as Record | Is Part Of | This Item |