Jamelia hassan biography of michaels
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Hassan’s first film project, The Oblivion Seekers (1985), began with a childhood memory and a search through private and public archives.
Yet despite the influence of here, Hassan’s work is equally influenced by there – as experienced through her research and travels in Asia, the Americas and the Middle East, and Lebanon, the homeland of her parents. She participated in the Havana Biennial in 2009 and recently the Quebec City’s Biennal, Manif 7, Resistance: And Then We Built New Forms in 2014.
Since the 1970s she has created a body of work that is intensely driven by an engagement in both local and international politics and cultures. I invited two people from the Vancouver community, each with calligraphic skills, one in Arabic (Hanna Kawas), the other in Chinese (Jin Li) to participate in the installation by commenting on the meaning of this Arabic expression and then writing this saying in their respective scripts on the wall of the gallery.
I love to celebrate those differences in my community and take the opportunity to become more informed about my heritage." A big virtual round of applause for Jamelia and all that she does for our Michaels family! She served as a member on the advisory committee for the “Minister’s Forum on Culture & Diversity” (2003) at the Museum of Civilization (Gatineau, Quebec).
Jamelie Hassan Artist Statement
Installation works are dependent on many factors but the site and its context are fundamental - what one might call the hospitality of the site to embrace the idea.
Previous installation works of mine have addressed histories, both personal and public, and the architectural aspect of the installation’s space and context is a major determining factor.
The site of the Great Mosque of Xi’an and its founding in 742 during the Tang Dynasty offers a compelling history and is the inspiration for my work, Nur.
The Great Mosque has a quiet beauty with its Chinese architecture and gardens.
This exhibition was awarded the Best Exhibition of the Year (2009) from the Ontario Art Gallery Association.
Her installation Garden of Light was selected for the Pearson Garden of Peace & Understanding at University of Toronto for the city's first Nuit Blanche
Seek Knowledge Even onto China, red paint, Chinese and Arabic calligraphy in vinyl, edition of 3, 1993-95
Collection of the artist and the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery (Leithbridge, Alberta)
(September 30, 2006).
Jamelia shares with us what this month means to her and how she celebrates Black History Month. Her interdisciplinary installations explore personal and public histories.
A survey exhibition of her work, Jamelie Hassan: At the Far Edge of Words
organized by Museum London (Ontario, Canada) and the the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia circulated around Canada (2009-2013) accompanied by a publication (2010).
Artefacts are evidence of the significant cultural exchanges along the Silk Route which took place between countries from West Asia and sites in China. The film juxtaposes archival and family film footage of celebratory dancing and singing, seamlessly moving between sites in Canada, the United States, Lebanon and Egypt, and is a powerful record of individual identity situated against the backdrop of political tension in the world.
Jamelia has grown with Michaels in six different roles over the past eight and a half years! In 2012 she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts artist in residence at La Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris). The calligraphy is based on the text on the ceiling of the dome of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul which is from the verse Nur (Light) in the Qur’an.
Further investigating these tensions, the exhibition includes early paintings from travels in Iraq in the late 1970s, as well as Qana, Lebanon (2006), a series of newer ink drawings created in response to the Israeli bombings of the Lebanese town in 2006, and Curfew (2007), a series of watercolour paintings prompted by the curfews imposed in Rangoon by Burma’s military dictatorship.
These dual cultural elements create an extraordinary presence within the city’s vibrant Muslim quarter.
In my installation work Nur, (Light) Arabic script is painted onto panels which are in proportion to the ceiling of the library of the Great Mosque of Xi’an. She has frequently served as a member of advisory panels and art juries for the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Ontario Arts Council, both Toronto and Canada Council for the Arts.
In Even Onto China, from 1995, the Arabic saying (hadith) was one that my father would repeat to us, his Canadian-born children, growing up in a Muslim household in a small city in southern Ontario.
“ Seek Knowledge Even Onto China" creates a geographical trajectory of philosophical orientation. The title of the exhibition, At the Far Edge of Words, pays homage to Palestinian poet laureate Mahmoud Darwish, evoking a line from his poem “I am from there”.