He creates provocative works that make political statements and query identity, in particular looking at being a Muslim in Australia, and examines the themes of alienation and othering.
For Abdul, nine years younger than Abdul-Rahman, the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 had a huge effect on him as a child, and has informed his art practice.
His works at this exhibition included three collages of people wearing balaclavas over their heads,[6] which had been created from photos of an eye each of Kanye and Beyoncé and the mouth of Madonna.
[4] In September 2015, Abdullah gave a talk about his practice at TedX Sydney, speaking about how his identity had been politicised since the events of 9/11, and how the War on Terror had affected his family and his understanding of and relationship with the world.
[7] In 2016 his portrait of former New South Wales Police officer Craig Campbell, who defended two Middle Eastern men during the 2005 Cronulla riots and afterwards suffered from PTSD, was a finalist for the Archibald Prize, the third time for Abdullah.
[4] In a 2017 solo exhibition at the UNSW Galleries, Abdullah's work represented "popular understandings of young Muslims from a non-Muslim perspective", which encouraged viewers to think about their own biases.
[10] In June 2020 Abdullah participated in a project called 52 Actions at Artspace in Sydney, in which he documented his own text-based tattoos in a series of photographs, accompanied by a written piece explaining how each serves to remind him of his political principles.
[4] In 2011 Abdullah won the Blake Prize for Human Justice,[7] for his photographic self-portrait entitled "Them and Us" of himself and his brother,[17] for which he especially got a tattoo of the Southern Cross placed around an Islamic crescent moon and star.
[19] In 2019 he won the inaugural Australian Muslim Artists Art Prize,[19] and in the same year was shortlisted along with his brother Abdul-Rahman Abdullah to represent Australia in the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Intended as "a critique of the historical role of colonial Australian landscape painters", the work has the question "What would our public collections look like if we divested them of sex pests and paedophiles?"