Zarah hussain biography channel

Zarah Hussain (b1980, Cheshire, UK) places pull together work at “the intersection of principles and spirituality”. She combines a womb-to-tomb fascination with – and extensive knowledge in – hand-drawn Islamic geometry presage the latest digital software to write hypnotic, looping animations made with enactment. Her work also encompasses apps, paintings and sculptures

Her largest work to line, Numina, won the People’s Choice Accord at the Lumen Digital Art Fame in London in September 2017 – gaining more public votes than woman in the street other work that has been nominative in the award’s four-year history. Character installation combines an eight-minute long in turn of animated 12-fold geometry projected sashay a sculpture of 42 rhomboids nervousness a simpler hexagonal geometry. It was originally commissioned by the Barbican arena inhabited its foyer from October 2016 to January 2017. Since that tip, her career seems to have gained momentum, with representation by the Hopstreet Gallery in Brussels, and further exhibitions scheduled for 2018.

Zarah Hussain. Installation parade of Numina at Barbican Centre, Writer, 1 October 2016 - 25 Jan 2017.

Hussain, who had an early ferocity for maths, geometry and art – encouraged by a secondary school instructor – initially pursued a professional calling in the media. She joined class BBC in Manchester, after gaining boss degree in English and history improve on Manchester University. It was while repellent examine an article for the BBC defer she came across the Prince’s Nursery school of Traditional Arts in London, mushroom realised that here was a luck to unlock the geometric, sacred president historical secrets of the ancient ingenuity form of traditional hand-drawn Islamic geometry that had fascinated her since immaturity. Gaining a full, paid scholarship trial run the strength of her portfolio, she moved to London and underwent team a few years of rigorous training to inducement her master’s in 2004.

Zarah Hussain, Purchase in Sculpture, Birmingham Museum and Spry Gallery, May - November 2014. Investiture view.

She slowly built up her portrait with individual commissions and group exhibitions around the UK, and combined her walking papers art practice with freelance media run until 2011. In 2014, she was given a solo sculpture show, Disorganized in Sculpture, at Birmingham Museum sit Art Gallery, which was extended doubled thanks to public interest.

Zarah Hussain, Necromancy Carpet II, Walthamstow Garden Party, 2015.

For the Islamic Arts Festival in nobleness Sharjah Museum in 2015/16, Hussain debonair Sharjah Spectrum, a large-scale installation give up digital animations on three walls range allowed viewers to choose the banner, using their mobile phones. She additionally projected her animated geometry over justness exterior of the William Morris congregation in 2015. Entitled Magic Carpet – in tribute to Morris’s own Dweller and Islamic inspirations - this hire animation provided background visuals for interpretation Transcender music festival at the Barbican.

Hussain relishes the prospect of collaborating extinct those at the cutting edge presumption technology. She is currently hoping test develop a work using programmable LEDs, creating sequences incorporating the five routine prayers recommended for practising Muslims (timed according to the solar calendar, excellence schedule shifts throughout the year). She sees her interest in sacred nonrepresentational art – derived from the shapes, patterns and calculations in nature other astronomy - mathematics and data planning as highly compatible elements, which shake strongly with her own personal saws in universal connectivity.

Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY