The Loft Pavilion presents the most developed iteration of Khairullah Rahim’s ongoing research project, initiated in 2020 as Boor-Koo. The project interrogates the politics of visibility and counter-surveillance strategies through the entangled relations between bodies, objects and the everyday, while introducing new perspectives on queerness and marginalised lived experiences within hostile environments. Its title references the loft structures used to house, breed and train pigeons used for racing and breed shows.

The works explore how hyper-visibility and everyday tactics of navigation can become modes of survival, operating through camouflage and strategic misdirection rather than disclosure. Acts of piling and stacking further evoke aspirations toward accumulation and upward mobility through excess, repetition and precarious elevation.

Rock doves recur throughout the installation as a metaphor responding to the frequent mass extermination of pigeons in the artist’s neighbourhood of Boon Lay. Parallels emerge between the treatment of pigeons and stereotypical representations of marginalised identities, where bodies must navigate guilt, shame and desire under persistent surveillance. The project ultimately confronts the unequal conditions that shape who is afforded the capacity to dream and aspire.