Zarina Bhimji

Bhimji is motivated by art's ability to re-make experience in the mind of the viewer: 'if I can't make an object that describes a dusty room so someone else understands what it feels like to be in that room, then I've failed'. She wants to move people, and to tap into a way of thinking that is not embedded in words. Her art communicates with the urgency that comes from working something out for yourself, rather than having been told what and how to think. Yet beauty is her principal method: 'when you create something beautiful, you're taking charge'. This major publication spans Bhimji's career from She Loved to Breathe - Pure Silence (1987), a photo-text installation that explores politics, voice, beauty and love as forms of resistance to her most recent work, a new film, Blind Spot (2023). Also lavishly illustrated is Bhimji's first film, Out of Blue (2002), an allusive exploration of the extermination and erasure of particular groups by a state; and Waiting (2007), an atmospheric wander around a stilled factory that processed sisal into twine. Bhimji is motivated by art's ability to re-make experience in the mind of the viewer: 'if I can't make an object that describes a dusty room so someone else understands what it feels like to be in that room, then I've failed'. She wants to move people, and to tap into a way of thinking that is not embedded in words. With an essay by Allison K Young looking at the decades-wide arc of Bhimji's practice which also saw monumental shifts in the art world that received it. It also includes a conversation between Zarina Bhimji and novelist Kamila Shamsie which moves from childhood recollections to the poetry, music and cultural inflences on Bhimjis work.