Jin is pejorative for a supernatural creature, and here, Zulkifli Yusoff turned the lembu (cow), a hard-working livestock, into a jin (related to magical Aladdin lamp?). Subverting such trajectory, fellow artist Juhari Said exalted the lembu to the top of the food chain in his 1999 woodcut, Katak Nak Jadi Lembu. In motor vehicles, the letter, L, also refers to a rookie or a rank amateur. This was a time of Zulkifli’s Brave New Art held at The Art Gallery in 1996. In 1996, he also created his installation masterpiece, Don’t Play During Maghrib, which was shown at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997. Zulkifli delves into Malay historical tomes like The Malay Annals, Hikayat Munshi Abdullah, Malay Sketches and Hang Tuah to highlight current foibles, hypocrisy, indiscretions and treachery. The miscreants of past feudal society morphed into the modern-day Professor Katak, Professor Kangkong, the lecherous Ahmad and Jibul. In Zulkifli’s book, Icons (Wei Ling Gallery), Hasnul Saidon described Zulkifli as an “epitome of Neo-Expressionist impulse, Malay angst and dilemma.” Zulkifli Yusoff emerged as the art super nova in the late 1980s when he won the Major Award in the Young Contemporary Artists (BMS) competition in 1988 and 1989, and capped it by winning the highly coveted Minister’s Grand Prize in Salon Malaysia in 1992, together with 1st and 3rd Prizes in Sculpture. He taught at his alma mater University ITM and then Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris in Tanjung Malim, and was awarded the National Academy Award (Visual Art) in 2007. After ITM, he studied for his Masters at the Manchester Polytechnic in England. He took part in the Venice Biennale twice, first in 1997 under Modernities and Memories: Recent Works from the Islamic World and again in 2019 under the Malaysian Pavilion. He was also chosen for the inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial of Art in Brisbane in 1993, and the Singapore Biennale and Art Stage Singapore in 2013.