Maryam Jafri, Untitled (Obstruction), plaster, wood, EPS foam, 85.0 x 85.0 x 510.0 cm, 2023
Maryam Jafri, DOOM LOOP, cardboard on alu-dibond, keyboard keycaps, 66.0 x 40.0 cm, 2024
Maryam Jafri, Home (No Lithium, No Work), archival inkjet prints, smartphone bezels, key cap, 33.66 x 43.81 cm, 2023
Maryam Jafri, I'm Not Working (No Lithium, No Work), pill organizer, keyboard letters, 5.08 x 22.86 x 12.70 cm, 2023
Maryam Jafri, Home Office ft. Angola, Iraq, Vietnam, Vicodin, iMac, computer table, office chair, pharmaceutically-branded office supplies, 14 min looped video + sound, 2021
Maryam Jafri, The Everyday Model, 1 framed image 24,8 x 53 cm and 1 framed text panel 19.0 x 14,2 cm, 2021
Maryam Jafri, Depression, wood, silicone feet, acupuncture needles, glass cupping equipment, photograph mounted on aluminium, egg carton, ambiental dimension, 2017
Maryam Jafri, Where We’re At, wooden grid, books, vinyl, paper handout, 485.0 × 254.0 cm, 2017
Maryam Jafri, Generic Corner, photographs, text panel, plinths, objects, installation dimensions variable, 2015
Maryam Jafri, Generic Corner (Kidney Beans), ink-jet print, wooden frame, 42.0 x 52.0 x 3.0 cm, 2015
Maryam Jafri, Avalon, 2011, HD film, color, sound, 11‘44‘‘
Maryam Jafri, Avalon, 2011, HD film, color, sound, 11‘44‘‘
Maryam Jafri, Versus series: Getty vs. Ghana, mixed media; 8 photographs + 4 framed texts, 2012-2015
Maryam Jafri, Versus series: Getty vs. Ghana, mixed media; 8 photographs + 4 framed texts, 2012-2015
Maryam Jafri, Versus series: Getty vs. Ghana, mixed media; 8 photographs + 4 framed texts, 2012-2015
For the past twenty years Maryam Jafri has worked across varied media including video, sculpture and photography, with a specific interest in questioning the cultural and visual representations of history and political economy and their impact on our quotidian experience. Her practice draws upon diverse traditions from literature and theater to pop and conceptual art. Her pointed, often darkly humorous works address issues including the latest mutations in identity-fueled capitalism such as personalization and the passion economy (Hi Maryam, 2021) to photo/text works focusing on the digitalization of historical images and the consequences for issues cultural memory and copyright law (Disappearance Online, 2021) to works examining wellness and precarity (Wellness Post-Industrial Complex, 2017) to sculptural installations focusing on the impact of graphic design, branding, and display on our everyday habits (Generic Corner, 2015, Product Recall: An Index of Innovation, 2014-2015).
Above all her interdisciplinary art practice is grounded in an engagement with the formal and conceptual qualities of each media, periods of extensive research and planning, and the mysterious but crucial role played by forces that lie outside deliberation and preparation such as accident, chance, and intuition.
Notable solo exhibitions include Institute of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Blaffer Museum of Art, (Houston), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Kunsthalle Basel, Betonsalon (Paris), Gasworks (London), Kunshtal Aarhus, Museet for Samtidskunst Roskilde, Malmö Konstmuseum, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver. Recent biennials include Front International (Cleveland Triennial), Sao Paolo Biennial, Venice Biennial (Belgian Pavilion), Manifesta 9, Shanghai, Taipei, Bucharest, Thessaloniki, and Quebec City Biennials among others. Recent group exhibitions include “Fassbinder & Contemporary Video Art” at Martin Gropius Bau, “Past is Present: Murals” at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and “Meepting Points 9” at Beirut Art Center. Her work has been reviewed in Art Forum, Frieze, Mousse, Camera Austria, Art Papers, Texte Zur Kunst, Kunstforum, and elsewhere.