Shiraka (come together) presents the results of a yearlong research project with Mirna Bamieh, Ayaz Jokhio and Hasnat Mahmood, in which new bodies of work have been developed in response to ceramic traditions from the Middle East and North Africa, Sindhi quiltmaking and the Al Sadu patterns of Bedouin textiles.

Researching ancient ceramic techniques that artisans have maintained in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco, artist Mirna Bamieh developed innovative pieces to be used in her dinner performances that explore the disappearing food and land of Palestine. Artists Ayaz Jokhio and Hasnat Mehmood mined long-standing textile traditions in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates to serve as foundations for craftspeople and students to appropriate them in new quilts and drawings.

Organised by Atteqa Ali, support for this project is provided through Zayed University’s Research Incentive Fund. Works will be on display at the Project Space in Warehouse 50 from 12-14 April.

Join us for Iftar with Mirna Bamieh’s Palestine Hosting Society at Warehouse 51 on Wednesday 13 April, followed by artist presentations by Ayaz Jokhio and Hasnat Mehmood and moderated by Atteqa Ali. Spaces are limited, please register here.

Iftar and talks:

13 April, 6:30 - 8:30pm, Warehouse 51​

Exhibition:

12 & 14 April, 12:00 - 4:00 pm, Warehouse 50

13 April, 12:00 - 10:30pm, Warehouse 50

Biographies

Hasnat Mehmood is a visual artist trained in the miniature painting tradition at the National College of Arts, in Lahore, Pakistan currently works in multiple media including sound, drawing, installation, collage, performance, and interactive events. His work is informed by neo-colonial practices, postcolonial history and art itself. Mehmood has shown nationally and internationally over the past two decades. His work is in the collections of the British Museum and Fukuoka Museum Japan. He was part of a group show titled Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration that traveled internationally and was shown at The Asian Art Museum, in San Francisco and at The Aldrich Contemporary Museum, in Connecticut. He taught at his alma mater from 2005-2017. He was an artist-in-residence at Britto Artist Residency in Dhaka, 2006, and a Campus Art Dubai alumnus, 2014. Born in Jhelum, Mehmood lives and works in the USA. He recently completed MFA in Interdisciplinary Practice from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, MA, USA.

Mirna Bamieh is an artist from Jerusalem/Palestine. She obtained a B. A in Psychology from Birzeit University in Ramallah (2002–2006) and an M.F.A. at Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design in Jerusalem (2011–2013). She took part in Ashkal Alwan Home Works study program in Beirut (2013/14). Her work attempts to understand and contemplate the ever-shifting politics, while equally questioning notions of land and geographies of in-between temporality. Her work looks more at scenarios that take the language of the absurd and the ironic and uses them as tools for political commentary. In 2017, obtaining a Diploma in Professional Cooking made her develop works that use the mediums of storytelling and food for creating socially engaged projects through her art practice, such as Potato Talks and Palestine Hosting Society. Her work has been featured on several platforms, such as Aj+, BBC, The New York Times Magazine, Mold, Usta, Somethingcurated, Hyperallergic, MoMA Ps1, Chronogram, El Comodista, al Ahram, Yale Theater magazine.

Ayaz Jokhio, born in 1978 in Mehrabpur, Pakistan, obtained his BFA (with distinction) from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2001. He dissects the grammar of images with a certain intellectual logic and uses for his artistic works an amalgamation of imagery from print media, the Internet, and popular culture along with his own observations of contemporary Pakistan. Jokhio uses installation, drawing, painting, and text to pose questions about the ways in which we regard and represent our world, often also commenting on the conventions of gallery display. His work has been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Pakistan and abroad, and he has been a resident artist in Switzerland, Germany and Japan. Ayaz Jokhio teaches at the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University in Lahore.

Atteqa Ali is an art historian, independent curator, and writer based in Connecticut. She has written for several publications, including an essay that examines fundamentalism, terrorism, and art in Pakistan for the anthology, Contemporary Art: 1989 to Present (Wiley Blackwell, 2013) and an essay on the impact of institutions in the UAE on contemporary art in the MENASA for the anthology, Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and Regional Processes (Routledge, 2016). Her book-length study of socially engaged art in the extended Middle East region is entitled Collaborative Art Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She has organized several exhibitions including a project at Twelve Gates Gallery in Philadelphia entitled “Back to the Future: History and Contemporary Art in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia” that considered the work of artists utilizing historical references to talk about current social and political events.