About the artist
Shenaz Mahomed (b. 1992) is a curator and artist based in Pretoria. She obtained her BA in 2014 and her MA in Fine Arts in 2018 from the University of Pretoria.
Mahomed worked as a curator at Fried Contemporary Art Gallery for four years until its closure. From 2018 to 2021, she served as the Curatorial Assistant and Logistics Manager at the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria. Currently, she is a lecturer in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Pretoria and is pursuing a PhD in Digital Culture and Media. Her research focuses on online platforms as venues for exhibitions and the implementation of alternative curatorial strategies.
Mahomed has participated in several prestigious art competitions in South Africa, and her work is included in the collections of Absa, the University of Pretoria, the Department of Arts and Culture, Tiwani Contemporary (UK), as well as in private collections belonging to Wayne Barker, Gavin Rajah, Diane Victor, Harrie Siertsema, Raimi Gbadamosi, and Vusi Beauchamp.
Hijab Performed
Digital print and hand-cut paper
While hand cut paper is not a commonly used medium in art, it has become a signature of Shenaz Mahomed's multi media artworks. Her artwork deals with her own experience of being a Muslim woman and the stereotypes and perceptions that surround Islam. Shenaz Mahomed's practice involves a reflective reading of traditional Islamic visual forms of art and written texts as a means to communicate present-day encounters. She aims to interrogate her daily practice of religion and ritual by mapping relations and traces of her actions into art objects. Taking into account our current global crisis and navigating a life during the Covid-19 pandemic, the works focus on ideas of precaution and lessons to be learnt from history. The works interplay challenges faced in the past and present. She specifically chooses to work with history books from her childhood to hint at an innocence and naivety in how we view history and how we handle a repeat of it. Shenaz Mahomed uses her artworks to push the boundaries of what contemporary Islamic art is traditionally supposed to be, and in doing so, highlights how islamophobia and racism affect the lives of ordinary people. The laborious process of hand cutting intricate Islamic patterns is a nod to her heritage but the new concepts that Mohamed incorporates in her art reveals her concern with what it means to be a Muslim woman in South Africa.
