The Power Plant

Hajra Waheed translates research and observation into works that explore links between security, surveillance and the covert networks of power that structure our lives, while also addressing the traumas of displaced subjects affected by legacies of colonial and state violence.

Hold Everything Dear takes a single form — the spiral — as a starting point to reflect on processes of upheaval in human experience. Partly inspired by a collection of essays on survival and resistance by art critic and novelist John Berger, the works act as a meditation on undefeated despair and the possibilities for radical hope.

From the miniscule to the monumental, from calm to chaos and storm to sea, Waheed brings together a constellation of new work that draws upon patterns as they manifest across natural and sociopolitical structures. Many of the works visualize modes of resisting and overcoming tides of violence and despair, often in intimate, powerful ways.

Using the ordinary as a means to denote the profound, and landscape as a medium to transpose human struggle, the works, at times punctuated by prose, constantly slip between how power relations are imposed and how they may be transcended.

The artist would like to acknowledge Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec for their support of this new work.

A related exhibition of Hajra Waheed's work was on view at the Small Arms Inspection Building as a part of Toronto Biennial of Art.

LEARN MORE

Watch Hajra Waheed's In Conversation with Nabila Abdel Nabi and Jayne Wilkinson here:

FALL 2019 PROGRAM GUIDE

Click here to read more about The Power Plant's Fall 2019 exhibitions and programming for the season!

READING ROOM

Our reading list helps expand on ideas and themes of The Power Plant's exhibitions. Visit the gallery to view Hajra Waheed's selection.

From A to X – by John Berger

Hold Everything Dear, Dispatches on Survival and Resistance – by John Berger

Hope In the Dark, Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities – by Rebecca Solnit

Field Notes and Other Backstories – by Hajra Waheed