Image: Nilupa Yasmin
DECOLONISING THE GAZE : ONLINE SYMPOSIUM
Arpita Shah, Maryam Wahid, Nilupa Yasmin & Caroline Molloy
10th September
6pm – 8pm
£3 (plus booking fee)
This online event follows on from GRAIN and The New Art Gallery Walsall’s collaboration on the exhibition ‘Too Rich A Soil’ which opened on the 15th November 2019 and closed early due to lockdown. The exhibition presented new work that dealt with themes of identity and representation, from three British artists’ of South Asian descent, Arpita Shah, Maryam Wahid and Nilupa Yasmin. This session, originally intended to be a face to face symposium has been rescheduled as an online event. Each artist will have the opportunity to share a selection of their practice and contribute to crucial conversations about the politics of representation.
The event is organised by GRAIN in collaboration with The New Art Gallery Walsall and will be chaired by academic Caroline Molloy. Places must be booked in advance and there is a small fee of £3.00 to attend.
Arpita Shah
Arpita Shah is a photographic artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She works between photography and film, exploring the fields where culture and identity meet. As an India-born artist, Shah spent an earlier part of her life living between India, Ireland and the Middle East before settling in the UK. This migratory experience is reflected in her practice, which often focuses on the notion of home, belonging and shifting cultural identities. Shah’s work tends to draw from Asian and Eastern mythology, using it both visually and conceptually to explore issues of cultural displacement in the Asian Diaspora.
Aprita Shah’s work is featured at Fast Forward gallery.
Maryam Wahid
Maryam Wahid (b. 1995) is an award winning artist. Using the art of photography, Wahid’s work explores her identity as a British Pakistani Muslim woman.
She expresses the origins of the Pakistani community in her hometown Birmingham (UK) by exploring her deeply rooted family history; and the mass integration of migrants within the United Kingdom. Her academic background in Art, Photography and Religious Studies alongside her fascination in cultural cognition and religious ideologies have progressively influenced her work. Her work is autobiographical but delves into human experiences and existence today. She is keen to photograph the complexity of places around the world and the places people call home.
Maryam Wahid’s work is featured at Fast Forward gallery.
Nilupa Yasmin
Nilupa Yasmin is a photographic artist based in Birmingham, West Midlands. Yasmin has a keen interest in the notion of culture, self-identity and anthropology, which she combines with her love for handcraft and photographic explorations, to repeatedly draw upon her own South Asian culture and heritage.
Her research examines the principles of craft in art based practice; becoming an evident methodology shown throughout her work whilst investigating ideals and traditions that are very close to home. Repeatedly drawing upon what it means to be a British Bangladeshi Muslim Woman, she aims to create a space of representation for the underrepresented, through her photographic practise.
Nilupa Yasmin’s work is featured at Fast Forward gallery.
Caroline Molloy
Caroline Molloy is an artist, academic and writer. She is an Assistant Professor in Photography at Coventry University, alongside of which she has just submitted her PhD thesis that looks at the performance of transcultural identity in studio photography at Birkbeck, University of London. She has an MA in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths, and an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art. Caroline is well read in post-colonial and decolonising theory; her research interests are in raising the audibility of the maginalised voice through the activation of archives. She regularly writes about photography and visual culture for Visual Studies, The Journal of Visual Practice, Source Magazine, 1000words and Photomonitor.
