Biography

Ayesha Hameed explores the heritage of Black diasporas through the figure of the Atlantic Ocean. Her Afrofuturist approach combines performance, sound essays, videos and lectures. Hameed examines the mnemonic power of these media—their capacity to transform the body into a body that remembers. The motifs of water, borders and displacement, recurrent in her work, offer a reflection on migration stories and materialities, and, more broadly, on the relations between human beings and what they imagine as nature.

Her recent exhibitions include Liverpool Biennale (2021); Gothenburg Biennale (2019, 2021); Lubumbashi Biennale (2019); and Dakar Biennale (2018). Her work has been exhibited, screened and performed at numerous venues, including Camden Arts Centre, London (2018); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018); Mosaic Rooms, London (2017); and Dutch Art Institute.

Hameed is currently Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University of London. She is the co-author of Visual Cultures as Time Travel (Sternberg/MIT 2021) and the co-editor of Futures and Fictions (Repeater, 2017), which was nominated for a 2018 International Center of Photography's Infinity Award in the Critical Writing and Research category. She has participated in residencies at Raw Material Academie 3, Dakar (as faculty member and observer) (2017); Contemporary Art Archipelago, Seili, Finland (2017); Alice Yard, Trinidad (2016, 2017) and Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada (2004, 2007, 2011), for which she was awarded a residency fellowship in 2005 and 2011.

She earned an MA in Social and Political Thought, York University, Canada (2001); a Graduate Certificate in Digital Technologies in Design Art Practice, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, Canada (2006) and a PhD in Social and Political Thought, York University, Canada (2008). She also took part in a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London (2012).

Born in Edmonton, Canada, Hameed currently lives and works in London.

SAF Participation:
March Meeting 2022
March Meeting 2018

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