Bio
Jala Wahid (*1988, lives and works in London) works across sculpture, video, installation and writing. She looks to the emotive and symbolic potential of materials, music and song in exploring the interregional and internal politics that have shaped Kurdistan and the implications this has from a diasporic perspective. She is interested in the complexities of nationalism within a stateless people, history and iconography, methods of archiving and existence, and Kurdish culture and politics as forms of self-preservation and defiance.
Jala Wahid received her BA from Goldsmiths College, London in 2014 and completed her PgDip in Fine Art at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2019.
Recent solo exhibitions include: 2022 ‘Aftermath‘, Niru Ratnam Gallery , London (UK); 2021 ‘Rock Fortress’, CAS Batumi, Batumi (GE), ‘Cry Me a Waterfall‘, Two Queens, Leicester (UK),; 2020 ‘Rock Fortress’ E.A. Shared Space, Tbilisi (GE); 2019 ‘Newroz’, SOPHIE TAPPEINER, Vienna (AT); 2017 ‘Akh Milk Bile Threat‘, Seventeen Gallery, London (UK), ‘Shahmaran’, Clearview, London (UK).
Selected group exhibitions include: 2022 ‘Testament‘, Goldsmiths CCA, London (UK); 2021 ‘Reconfigured‘, curated by Rose Easton, Timothy Taylor Gallery, New York City (US); 2019 ‘Searching the Sky for Rain‘, SculptureCenter, New York (US), ‘Being Towards‘ The World, SOPHIE TAPPEINER, Vienna (AT); 2018 ‘Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance, Acts 1, 2, and 3‘, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (UK), De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill and Arnolfini, Bristol (UK); 2018 ‘Entangled Tales‘, Rupert, Vilnius (LT); 2016 ‘Europa and the Bull‘, curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, Lambda Lambda Lambda, Pristina (XK), ‘And I’ll Promise You‘, Serpentine Gallery Park Nights, London (UK).
Wahid co-edited SALT. Magazine from 2012-2019.
PRESS / TEXTS
Review
Adeola Gay
Art Agenda
Jala Wahid: Cry me a Waterfall
Amrit Doll
Artreview
Anxiety is a feeling of unease
Antonia Marsh
Luncheon Magazine
These Art The Essential Artists You Need to Now Right Now
Louise Benson
ELEPHANT
Feature
Attilia Fattori Franchini
Mousse Magazine
Review
Tom M. Hastings
Frieze
Why Contemporary Women Artists Are Obsessed with the Grotesque
Tess Thackara
Artsy