Culture Now: Hajra Waheed

Artist Hajra Waheed is in conversation with Rachael Jarvis, discussing her practice on the occasion of her first UK presentation of the ‘first chapter’ from her work Sea Change at The Mosaic Rooms, London (11 March - 21 May 2016). Waheed’s oeuvre seeks to address personal, national and cultural identity formation in relation to political history, popular imagination and the broad impact of colonial power globally. Commenced in 2011, Sea Change is an on-going visual novel and multimedia archive which revolves around the journey and disappearance of nine persons in the name of salvation, a better life or new one.

Over the last decade, Hajra Waheed has participated in exhibitions worldwide, most recently including: Still Against the Sky, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); La Biennale de Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2014); Sea Change, Experimenter, Kolkata (2013); (In) the First Circle, Antoni Tàpies Foundation, Barcelona andLines of Control, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, NY (2012). Recipient of the prestigious 2014 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for outstanding achievement as a Canadian mid-career visual artist, her works can be found in a number of permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the British Museum, London, the Burger Collection, Zurich and Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi. She lives and works in Montréal.

Rachael Jarvis is Director of The Mosaic Rooms, a London-based non-profit cultural organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting contemporary culture from and about the Arab world. She is responsible for The Mosaic Rooms programme, including curating the exhibitions, multidisciplinary events, artist residencies and learning and engagement programme, as well writing and editing exhibition publications.

The Mosaic Rooms exhibition coincides with Waheed’s first institutional UK solo exhibition at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (until 30 May 2016)