Welcome Shiraz Bayjoo

in-tangible institute is pleased to welcome Shiraz Bayjoo to its ‘Creative In Residence’ program from 17 July.

Shiraz’s residency will be spent finalizing metal sculptures of particular botanics with local craftsman, amongst research and film scripts, at times privately sharing his methodologies with local moving image makers, culminating in a screening of select works at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, on 18 August. Following the screening, Shiraz will explore the role of language and objects as talismans of protection and resistance in his work. In conversation with in-tangible founder and director, Zoe Butt, he will share the importance of such relations, particularly for communities impacted by the ongoing (violent) legacies of colonial extraction and slavery. These themes will be brought into conversation with artworks by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Khvay Samnang, Sammy Baloji, Sara Ouhaddou, and other artists on display as part of the ‘Living Another Future’ exhibition at MAIIAM (curated by in-tangible institute).

About Shiraz

Shiraz Bayjoo is a contemporary multi-disciplinary artist who works with film, painting, photography, performance, and installation. His research-based practice focuses on personal and public archives addressing cultural memory and postcolonial nationhood in a manner that challenges dominant cultural narratives. Born in Port Louis, Mauritius, much of Bayjoo’s art explores colonial histories of exchange between and across the Indian Ocean. Bayjoo has exhibited with the Gropius Bau, Berlin; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Kunstal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Institute of International Visual Arts, London; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; 5th Edition Dhaka Art Summit; 14th Biennale of Sharjah; 13th Biennale of Dakar; and 21st Biennale of Sydney. Bayjoo is a recipient of the Gasworks Fellowship and the Arts Council of England, and was commissioned for Art Night, London 2019. He was an artist in residence at the Delfina Foundation in 2021, and was awarded the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Bayjoo presented a solo exhibition at the Diaspora Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennial in 2022, and the 15th edition of Sharjah Biennial 2023. Shiraz currently lives and works in Mauritius and London. https://shirazbayjoo.com/

About in-tangible institute ‘Creative In Residence’ program

This program seeks minds who understand why the world needs to be decentralized in how it thinks, values, defines, recalls and attends to cultural memory. To decentralize is to question who has the right to speak and for whom. To decentralize is to propel alternate perspectives on what is considered standard, original, and authentic. To decentralize is to understand the art of collaboration, of shared knowledge, and the necessity to study the hidden and the overlooked. 

This program focuses on the contexts and experiences of those hailing from globalizing souths, whose (enforced and voluntary) migratory experiences have forged transoceanic alliances of exchange and knowledge in the aftermath of colonial violence. The program endeavors to prompt critical encounters with disparate cultural memories, with the hope of challenging the assumptions of our systematized social worlds, whose realities are fashioned by hegemonic economies and histories bound to nation-building. 

Inviting a range of creative thinkers—writers, artists, curators, collectors, theorists, social scientists, musicians, filmmakers, and more—this program asks that residents engage our local community through their research. Via talks, screenings, seminars, workshops, music nights, or live conversations, residents are expected to spend time inspiring others rather than producing new individual work.