Hajra Waheed
Sea Change (2013 – ) is a visual novel that stitches together a story about the missing and the missed. It revolves around the journey and disappearance of nine people who do so in the name of salvation, a better life or a new one. Each chapter is dedicated to one character. Through hundreds of works and many in the making, viewers access an intimate glimpse into the fragments of selves that are left behind and the offerings that are made to all those along the way.
Hajra Waheed, Sea Change Chapter 1 – Character 1: In the Rough, A Short Film 1-331 (installation detail), 2014, Cut-Film Collage in 2.25″ Negative Glass Slide, Slide Viewer in Hand-Made Wood Casing, Pedestal
Sea Change (2013 – ) was conceived by the artist as a long term project, a life-long meditation. It was prompted by a news account the artist came across in December 2011, in which 166 pilgrims from Kolkata left for Saudi Arabia on the pretext of making Hajj, but upon arrival and after head count, were nowhere to be found. ‘The disappearance was quickly overlooked in the media but the story stayed with me’ states Waheed. ‘It takes courage to leave what you know in order to better understand what you don’t.’ In sifting through the growing fragments, it is difficult not to begin questioning whether this is indeed a story about a disappearance and mass migration or about something else. After all, everything left behind also hints at a secondary story – a story of love – though what remains unclear so far is if it is indeed between two people or between person and nation or their notions of home.
Hajra Waheed’s oeuvre 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. Prompted by news accounts and extensive research, Waheed’s practice uses complex narrative structures to explore issues from our current aerial occupation to the traumas and alienation of displaced subjects via mass migration. 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, Hajra Waheed has participated in exhibitions worldwide, most recently including Still Against the Sky, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); La Biennale de Montréal, 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). Recipient of the prestigious 2014 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for outstanding achievement as a Canadian mid-career visual artist, her works can be found in a number of permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the British Museum, London, the Burger Collection, Zurich and Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi. She lives and works in Montreal.