Zarina Bhimji Exhibits at Haunch of Venison

Monday, 08 May 2006 11:36

London - Zarina Bhimji (born Uganda, 1963) is an important international artist whose poignant photographic images and ethically engaged artworks have been shown in museums worldwide.  For her first exhibition at Haunch of Venison, Bhimji will present a new series of photographs made between 1998 and 2006.

Zarina Bhimji works in a wide range of media including installation, photography, film and sound. Since the early 1990s Bhimji has been interested in exploring systems of power and institutions.  For example, for a project at Harewood House and the Alhambra in 1998, she researched seventeenth century newspaper advertisements for young black boys as servants.  The resulting photographs of garden spaces explored historical situations where privileged colonial pleasure was sustained by violence, and accompanied by sexual desire. 

The locations of these new large-format color photographs were very carefully selected, and Bhimji reacted to the specific place and its environment, its scents and sounds, painstakingly composing beautiful and evocative images.  In particular the works are concerned with the quality of light, and with the poetry of texture and resonant details.  When the viewer looks closely at her work Bhimji removes all human figures to leave the locations where the photographs were made, and their narrative, open-ended.

While the works were made in Uganda, they do not address a specific political and historical situation, rather they are an intuitive response influenced by the ‘emotional cargo’ the artist brought to the sites.  The carefully selected everyday objects and spaces with their traces of human presence evoke universal feelings of grief, love, vulnerability, spirituality and loss, and the prevalence of violence.

Zarina Bhimji studied at Goldsmiths College from 1983-86 and at the Slade School of Art from 1987-89, and lives and works in London.  She has exhibited extensively internationally, and recent solo shows include Matrix, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, USA (2003) and Art Now, Tate Britain, London (2003).  In June 2006 she will participate in the 15th Sydney Biennale.

Visit Haunch of Venison at : www.haunchofvenison.com/  This exhibition is 10 May - 6 June 2006