The World Rolled off His Tongue is the solo exhibition by Singaporean artist-curator Zulkhairi Zulkiflee. The exhibition title is inspired by a collage the artist made in 2024, which serves as a metaphorical nudge to the Malay-Singaporean slang term “world.” The English word, through a semantic shift, illustrates a conversational penchant that captures risible histrionics to innocent embellishment in storytelling.
In the exhibition, Zul hones the slang term as a creative move for play and experimentation, as ideas jump through iterative gestures and associative thinking. A significant motif and “protagonist” in the exhibition is the pavilion, which the artist situates as a space where such idiosyncratic exchanges occur.
In this context, the pavilion also serves as a mnemonic structure and “monument” for its capacity to evoke formative memories and its potential to accommodate other structural significance. Through paintings on photo paper, collages, sculpture, and narrative writing, Zulkhairi inflects the vernacular structure with play and desire.