We’re pleased to welcome Hajra Waheed as the next guest in the Distinguished Visiting Artist program.
An Artist Talk by Hajra Waheed
Presented as part of the Distinguished Visiting Artist Program
UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory
12:15 p.m. PST, Wednesday, February 2, 2022
This virtual event is free and open to the public
In this talk, Hajra Waheed will be discussing recent and past projects. Waheed’s sprawling multidisciplinary practice explores the vicissitudes of violence and injustice with a uniquely poetic approach and engagement with the world. Weaving between the intimate and infinite constellations of the communities she is a part of, her works –while rooted in the historical– are at once transgressive of history, consistently imagining new possibilities towards a radically collective and borderless future.
Hajra Waheed’s multidisciplinary practice ranges from painting and drawing to video, sound, sculpture and installation. Amongst other issues, she explores the nexus between security, surveillance and the covert networks of power that structure lives, while also addressing the traumas and alienation of displaced subjects affected by legacies of colonial and state violence. Characterised by a distinct visual language and unique poetic approach, her works often use the ordinary as a means to convey the profound, and landscape as a medium to transpose human struggle and a radical politics of resistance and resilience.
Hajra Waheed’s works can be found in permanent collections including MOMA, New York; British Museum, London; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Art Institute of Chicago; Burger Collection, Zurich/Hong Kong and Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi. Hajra Waheed currently lives and works on EST/Montréal time.
Image: Installation view of Hajra Waheed’s Hum (2020), multi-channel sound installation with custom speaker casings, 36m 17s, at Portikus (11 July 2020 – 6 September 2020), Frankfurt, DE. Photo by Diana Pfammatter. All images courtesy the artist.