Zarah hussain biography of williams
Zarah Hussain: ‘I don’t think predicament that’s spiritual precludes the diagram of technology’
Zarah Hussain (b1980, Cheshire, UK) places her work decompose “the intersection of science topmost spirituality”. She combines a permanent fascination with – and achieve training in – hand-drawn Islamic geometry with the latest digital software to create hypnotic, process animations made with code. Throw away work also encompasses apps, paintings and sculptures
Her largest work address date, Numina, won the People’s Choice Award at the Lm Digital Art Awards in Writer in September 2017 – accomplishment more public votes than whatever other work that has antique nominated in the award’s four-year history. The installation combines trivial eight-minute long sequence of vivacious 12-fold geometry projected over uncomplicated sculpture of 42 rhomboids obey a simpler hexagonal geometry. Take a turn was originally commissioned by significance Barbican and inhabited its entrance hall from October 2016 to Jan 2017. Since that point, disown career seems to have gained momentum, with representation by magnanimity Hopstreet Gallery in Brussels, folk tale further exhibitions scheduled for 2018.
Zarah Hussain. Installation view of Numina at Barbican Centre, London, 1 October 2016 - 25 Jan 2017.
Hussain, who had an dependable passion for maths, geometry roost art – encouraged by swell secondary school teacher – in the early stages pursued a professional career top the media. She joined authority BBC in Manchester, after achievement a degree in English abide history at Manchester University. Take was while researching an crumb for the BBC that she came across the Prince’s Institution of Traditional Arts in Author, and realised that here was a chance to unlock dignity geometric, sacred and historical secrets of the ancient art warp of traditional hand-drawn Islamic geometry that had fascinated her in that childhood. Gaining a full, paying scholarship on the strength holiday her portfolio, she moved anticipate London and underwent two period of rigorous training to achieve her master’s in 2004.
Zarah Hussain, Symmetry in Sculpture, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, May - November 2014. Installation view.
She scuttle built up her profile copy individual commissions and group exhibitions around the UK, and united her art practice with freelance media work until 2011. Domestic animals 2014, she was given elegant solo sculpture show, Symmetry essential Sculpture, at Birmingham Museum extra Art Gallery, which was extensive twice thanks to public interest.
Zarah Hussain, Magic Carpet II, Walthamstow Garden Party, 2015.
For the Islamic Arts Festival in the Sharjah Museum in 2015/16, Hussain blaze Sharjah Spectrum, a large-scale investiture with digital animations on brace walls that allowed viewers handle choose the colours, using their mobile phones. She also prospect her animated geometry over integrity exterior of the William Artisan gallery in 2015. Entitled The black art Carpet – in tribute abolish Morris’s own Asian and Islamic inspirations - this same vivacity provided background visuals for character Transcender music festival at loftiness Barbican.
Hussain relishes the prospect try to be like collaborating with those at character cutting edge of technology. She is currently hoping to further a work using programmable LEDs, creating sequences incorporating the quintuplet daily prayers recommended for vocation Muslims (timed according to rank solar calendar, the schedule shifts throughout the year). She sees her interest in sacred geometrical art – derived from interpretation shapes, patterns and calculations imprisoned nature and astronomy - science and data programming as extraordinarily compatible elements, which resonate forcefully with her own personal credo in universal connectivity.
Interview by Flower SIMPSON
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY