Join us for a behind the scenes studio visit at Spike Island. This is a chance to explore artists’ and makers’ studios to see their working environments and to hear about their processes and works-in-progress in an informal and friendly setting.
On this visit, we meet artist Huma Mulji in her studio. Accompanied by Spike Island Assistant Curator Nella Aarne, Mulji discusses how literature and fiction impact her practice, and her abiding interest in how materials behave and misbehave. Continuing her work on collective memory in specific cultural and historical settings, Mulji elaborates on her investigations into recurring erasures and how images are deliberately obscured.
HUMA MULJI
Huma Mulji works with sculptural installation, photography, collage and drawing. Against a backdrop of economic globalisation, state power and fragmented histories, her work looks at the city and its collective memory, activating the dysfunctional, the sorrowful, the futile and the funny. Her sculptures stand as inconvenient witnesses to time and place, critically exploring material and form in her deliberately awkward works. Mulji is interested in examining the specificity of place, amplifying a perpetual discomfort and scepticism from the perspective of both observer and participant.
Mulji currently lives in Bristol and is Senior Lecturer, Fine Art, at UWE, Bristol. Her work has been exhibited widely and recent exhibitions include Your Tongue in My Mouth (solo), Mirror, Plymouth (2022); Can you Hear my Voice?, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, (2021); Skyfall, (solo) Karachi, Pakistan (2020); The Centre of Gravity, Bristol, UK, (2020); In the Open and in Stealth, MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (2018); and Witness, Karachi Biennale (2017). Mulji is represented by Project 88, Mumbai.