Episode 14: Hajra Waheed

Hajra Waheed seeks to address personal, national and cultural identity formation in relation to political history, popular imagination and the broad impact of colonial power globally. Her mixed-media practice consists of ongoing bodies of work that constitute a growing personal archive – one developed in response to all those seemingly lost amongst rapid regional development and/or political strife. Although works on paper remain the foundation of her practice, they often act as starting points for larger mixed media installations. Over the last decade, Waheed has participated in exhibitions worldwide, most recently including Collages: Gesture & Fragments, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, QC (2014), Sea Change, Experimenter, Kolkata (2013), (In) the First Circle, Antoni Tapies Foundation, Barcelona and Lines of Control, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, NY (2012). She lives and works in Montréal. In this episode Hajra talks about growing up on a transnational oil corporation in Saudi Arabia; fallen satellites; her preoccupation with undisclosed documents; telling stories as a means of ordering chaos; intimacy and distance in her representations of surveillance; and collage's potential for transformation. Hajra Waheed's solo exhibition Asylum in the sea will be presented at Darling Foundry in Montreal from June 18th to August 27th 2015. fonderiedarling.org/en/Asylum-in-the-sea.html This episode was hosted and produced by Yaniya Lee. Tumblr design and podcast logo by Naomi Cook. Hajra's website: hajrawaheed.com "The Homeless Wanderer" by Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou collected on Éthiopiques 21: Ethiopia Song Joe Grass performed this lap steel cover of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" live for La Blogothèque Write to [email protected] and subscribe the podcast on iTunes or Tumblr