Zarah Hussain
Sharjah Spectrum, 2016
Unique print for the Art in Flux Archive Collection
40 x 50cm
Geometric animation made with computer code
About the artist:
I am an artist with over 15 years national and international exhibition experience. I trained at the Princes’s School for an MA in Islamic art in 2004 and my practice has since evolved into a visual study of how spirituality, technology and art intersect. Working across many mediums, including animation, sculpture and painting, I combine the pattern making skills of traditional geometry with contemporary art.
I was the first artist to explore how algorithms could be used to animate Islamic pattern and my first work of this kind was commissioned by Cartwright Hall (Bradford, West Yorkshire) in 2005. It is now in the permanent collection of this museum. My most recent works include ‘Invisible Threads’, an animated light installation for the 2018 Barnaby festival in Macclesfield. This work looked into the hidden or ‘inviisible’ history of migration in the town and ‘Numina’, a large scale sculpture with a digitally animated 3D surface was commissioned by the Barbican in 2016. Numina combined designs found in the art of the Islamic world with state of the art projection technology. At the Islamic Art Festival in the Sharjah Museum in 2015/16, I presented ‘Sharjah Spectrum’, an installation that projected digital animations onto 3 gallery walls. I also projected an animated geometry onto the exterior of the William Morris gallery in 2015. This work, ‘Magic Carpet’, was also used to provide background visuals for the 2015 Transcender music festival at the Barbican. My painting and sculpture works have been exhibited extensively in the UK and abroad. I was awarded the Lumen prize for digital arts in 2017 and have been nominated twice for the Jameel prize at the V&A. I am currenly working on a touring solo show featuring a new body of sculptural works and a light installation. The show will open at Rugby Museum and Art Gallery. |