For the past three decades, Zulkifli has developed a multi-disciplinary practice that engages with the issues of history, power and greed. The works from the 1990s period are highly imaginative, reflecting not only his thought processes, but contemplates social structures of present-day realities. Zulkifli turns his attention to the subject of power and the tensions within groups, dominated by a rich variety of lines that give weight to the subjects. Long Journey offers an amalgam of forms that are reintegrated in a dramatic black and white composition on canvas. Zulkifli won the topmost Grand Minister's Prize in the Salon Malaysia in 1992, apart from the 1st and 3rd Prizes in Sculpture. He won the Major Award in the Bakat Muda Sezaman in 1988 and jointly in 1989. He had taken part in the Venice Biennale twice, in 1997 under the Modernities And Memories: Recent Works From The Islamic World, and then again in 2019. He taught at the Universiti ITM and Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris in Tanjung Malim, which won him the National Academy Award (Visual Art) in 2007. His credentials were the Masters at Manchester Polytechnic in England (1991) and Diploma at the Mara Institute of Technology (1989). He was selected for the 1st Asia-Pacific Triennial of Art in Brisbane in 1993, Seychelles Biennale 1992, and Singapore Biennale 2013.