Photo Rights: Shaheen Merali
Shaheen Merali is Artist Resident at the Angewandte and a Visiting Professor in the Department Art and Communication Practices during the summer semester 2023. The internationally renowned curator convenes and curates the following events:
pax praxis
The title pax praxis alludes to acts as a counterforce, framing and conceptualising de-globalisation and de-colonising understanding in the multiple locations in which art and education reside. Enacting on the place of continuous breakdown provokes a more comprehensive reading by artists, and scholars, enabling discussion of the processes of undoing, and re-making, defining themselves by separation from the inherited homology.
pax praxis events:
three online presentations (30 March–6 June 2023) moderated by Shaheen Merali
All online presentations require registration on Eventbrite.
Reflections on the following day about each online presentation with Shaheen Merali debating with students and researchers in (01) Flux 2, (02 and 03) Flux 1, (Angewandte VZA 7) between 11.30–13.00
introductory meeting 29 March 2023 18.00–19.30 Flux 2 (Angewandte VZA 7)
evicende raum – the exhibition
evidence raum is a large-scale installation by Shaheen Merali in the Angewandte Innovation Lab (AIL) on the surmountable provocations of our times as part of the Angewandte Festival held between 27–30 June, the exhibition continues till July 17 2023. Merali has invited artists: Ramesch Daha, Lisl Ponger, Peter Putz to present materials using their personal archives or collections to diversify the enquiry about radical histories and images.
Shaheen Merali (born 1959, Tanzania) is a writer, curator, critic, and artist of Asian heritage. Merali began his artistic practice in the 1980s, committing to social, political, and personal narratives. As his practice evolved, he focused more on his work as a curator, lecturer and critic and has now moved into the sphere of research and writing. Previously he was a key lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art (1995-2003), a visiting lecturer and researcher at the University of Westminster (1997-2003) and the Head of the Department of Exhibition, Film and New Media at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2003-2008). A regular speaker on ideas of contemporary exhibition-making internationally, in 2018 he was the keynote speaker at the International Art Gallery of the Aga Khan Diamond Jubilee Arts Festival, Lisbon.
As an exhibition maker at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Merali curated several exhibitions accompanied by publications which he edited, including The Black Atlantic; Dreams and Trauma – Moving images and the Promised Lands; and Re-Imagining Asia, One Thousand Years of Separation. Merali was the co-curator of the 6th Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2006) and the co-curator of Berlin Heist or the enduring fascination of walled cities for the 4th Mediations Biennale, Poland (2014-2015).
In August 2021, the commissioning body of the inaugural Uganda Pavilion for the International art exhibition of the 59th Venice Biennale appointed Merali as a key advisor and the curator for the exhibition Radiance – They Dream in Time, April 23rd – November 26th, 2022 at the Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, San Marco 2597, Venice. On 23rd April 2022 the Jury of the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, at the Golden Lion Ceremony comprising Adrienne Edwards (USA), President of the Jury, Lorenzo Giusti (Italy), Julieta González (Mexico), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (Cameroon), Susanne Pfeffer (Germany), decided to present the special mention award to the Uganda Pavilion for its National participation.
In 1988, Merali had co-founded the Panchayat Arts Education Resource Unit in Old Spitalfields Market. The Unit’s main function was one of collecting ephemera, documents, and publications, detailing the work of British political Black artists (of Asian and African descent). The collection provided research material aimed to illustrate the link between modern and contemporary art and activism through archival practices focused on the work of issue-based artists in the United Kingdom and internationally. In 2015 the Panchayat archival material was donated and is part of the Tate library’s Special Collection in London. In 2019 the Tate commissioned Merali as the curatorial consultant on the AHRC funded Provisional Semantics case study. Merali researched, shaped, determined the content and direction, and lead three online conversations. Tate Publishing assisted in editing of the written transcripts and access to the recorded material to be maintained via a link titled Panchayat-Horizon from the Tate website to youtube.