Jala Wahid

Jala Wahid is a British-Kurdish artist based in London.  Wahid works across sculpture, film, sound and installation. Her work is rooted in archival research into the erased histories of Kurdish history and politics, looking at this both from the perspective of Kurdish writers and historians as well as examining the colonial rhetoric and decision-making that systematically attempted to dismantle Kurdish cultural identity. She then works from that research to make objects and films that articulate what has been erased, acknowledging that this is always a partial articulation that is felled with gaps, echoes and whispers. She often chooses a deliberately joyous or even delirious aesthetic to offer a counter-narrative to colonisers accounts and is interested in the emotive potential of Kurdish music, literature, dance and theatre. In this way her work brings together both politics and poetic expression. 

For her first show at the gallery in 2021 Wahid started with research into the fragmentary archives of London’s Kurdish Cultural Centre as well as more official records archived by the British state. From these archives she pieced together the way that Britain’s relationship and political decision-making towards Kurdistan came about, in particular with relation to oil reserves. For her recent solo show at the gallery in 2024 Wahid’s research was based at the British Museum’s storage vaults and their collection of Kurdish artefacts and objects. From these encounters, Wahid constructed the imaginary lives of their contemporary equivalents in both new sculptures on vividly coloured and decorated plinths as well as a film.

Wahid’s sculptures, films and installations embrace the theatrical in a way that belies the complexity of the contested histories that lie behind them. The works are deliberately alluring and sensual in part to reject the coloniser’s dry reasoning that hides decisions made on the basis of economic exploitation, in part to celebrate a cultural identity that refuses to be erased.

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. Selected solo exhibitions include: GAK, Bremen (2023-24), Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg (2023), John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2023); Tramway, Glasgow (2023), BALTIC, Newscastle (2022); Niru Ratnam, London (2022); CAS Batumi, Batumi (2021), Cry Me a Waterfall, Two Queens, Leicester (2021). Recently, her work has been included in group shows held at the following institutions: Primary, Nottingham, Nottingham (2024), Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds (2023), Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Stavanger (2023), Boskamp-Stiftung, Hohenlockstedt (2023), Goldsmiths CCA, London (2022), CAPC Museum, Bordeaux (2020) SculptureCenter, New York (2019), Arnolfini, Bristol (2019, De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill (2019), Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2018).  Wahid co-edited SALT. Magazine from 2012-2019.