Abdi Berontak

Year : 2025

Medium : Acrylic paint

Dimension (cm) : 84.5 x 99.5 x 4.5cm

As Singapore marks sixty years of

nationhood, "Menghilang" reflects on what has been gained, what has quietly faded. The erosion of faith, identity and heritage in pursuit of worldly progress, dunya.

The painting depicts a Malay man adorned in tanjak, his body dissolving into gold dust beneath a cracked crescent moon. The image embodies the dilemma the symptom, one generation face after the next , torned between faith and material pursuit, remembering and forgetting. The gold shines yet suffocating, symbolises worldly wealth and ambition. The broken crescent echoes the spiritual fractures within a society that has risen materially but dimmed in spirit. 

Sixty years of nationhood is not only a celebration, but a moment of reckoning. Ask, if success has come at the cost of the soul. Confront the quiet loss. In striving to build the world, we must not lose ourselves.