Zarina Bhimji

Born in Mbarara, Uganda in 1963, Zarina Bhimji is an artist who lives and works in London. Through the diverse mediums of photography, film and installation, her practice engages questions of institutional power and vulnerability, universality, and intimacy.

Bhimji received a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London and a MA in Fine Art from the Slade, University College London. She was DAAD’s Artist-in-Residence 2002, exhibited as part of Documenta’s 50-year retrospective Discreet Energies in 2005, and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007. Awards include the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 1999 and the Rauschenberg Residency award, 2014. Bhimji has recently been awarded a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, 2020-21.

She has exhibited extensively since coming to prominence in the 1980s, when she was active in the Black Art movement. Significant early shows include From Two Worlds, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (1986); The Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black Art, Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester, UK (1987); The Essential BLACK ART, Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (1988). Recent exhibitions include Here We Are Today, Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, Germany (2019);  Lead White, Tate Britain, London, UK (2018) and The Fabric of Felicity, Garage Museum of Contemporary, Moscow, Russia (2018). Her works are also held in public collections including Tate, UK; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA.