Hajra Waheed

Hajra Waheed was born in 1980 in Calgary
She lives and works in Montréal

Hajra Waheed’s multidisciplinary practice ranges from painting and drawing to video, sound, sculpture and installation. Amongst other issues, she explores the connections between security, surveillance and the covert networks of power that structure human lives. Her practice also addresses the traumas and alienation of displaced subjects affected by legacies of colonial and state violence. Characterized 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.

Waheed‘s works has been presented in solo exhibitions at Hum, Portikus, Frankfurt (2020); Hold Everything Dear, The Power Plant, Toronto (2019); Hajra Waheed : The Video Installation Project, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2017); The Cyphers, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2016) ; Still Against the Sky, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015) ; Asylum in The Sea, Fonderie Darling, Montréal.

She participated in exhibitions worldwide including: Globale Resistance, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Lahore Biennial 02, Pakistan (2020); Pushing Paper: Contemporary Drawing from 1970 to Now, British Museum, London (2019); VIVA ARTE VIVA, 57th Venice Biennale (2017); 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016); La Biennale de Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec (2014); Lines of Control, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY (2012) and (In) The First Circle, Antoni Tapies Foundation, Barcelona (2012). 

She was a finalist for the 2016 Sobey Art Award and received the 2014 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for outstanding achievement as a mid-career artist. In 2022 she was the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award by the Hnatyshyn Foundation.

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.

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