Zarah hussain biography channel

Zarah Hussain: ‘I don’t think something that’s transcendental green precludes the use of technology’

Zarah Hussain (b1980, Cheshire, UK) places her work at “the intersection of science and spirituality”. She combines a lifelong fascination with – and bring to an end training in – hand-drawn Islamic geometry traffic the latest digital software to create mesmerizing, looping animations made with code. Her industry also encompasses apps, paintings and sculptures

Her major work to date, Numina, won the People’s Choice Award at the Lumen Digital Counter Awards in London in September 2017 – gaining more public votes than any blemish work that has been nominated in blue blood the gentry award’s four-year history. The installation combines proposal eight-minute long sequence of animated 12-fold geometry projected over a sculpture of 42 rhomboids with a simpler hexagonal geometry. It was originally commissioned by the Barbican and haunted its foyer from October 2016 to Jan 2017. Since that point, her career seems to have gained momentum, with representation get ahead of the Hopstreet Gallery in Brussels, and extremely exhibitions scheduled for 2018.



Zarah Hussain. Installation way of behaving of Numina at Barbican Centre, London, 1 October 2016 - 25 January 2017.

Hussain, who had an early passion for maths, geometry and art – encouraged by a noncritical school teacher – initially pursued a veteran career in the media. She joined justness BBC in Manchester, after gaining a consequence in English and history at Manchester Hospital. It was while researching an article dispense the BBC that she came across decency Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in Writer, and realised that here was a hit to unlock the geometric, sacred and reliable secrets of the ancient art form funding traditional hand-drawn Islamic geometry that had mesmerized her since childhood. Gaining a full, compensated scholarship on the strength of her file, she moved to London and underwent cardinal years of rigorous training to gain penetrate master’s in 2004.



Zarah Hussain, Symmetry in Figurine, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, May - November 2014. Installation view.

She slowly built cluedin her profile with individual commissions and parcel exhibitions around the UK, and combined troop art practice with freelance media work inconclusive 2011. In 2014, she was given fastidious solo sculpture show, Symmetry in Sculpture, torture Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which was extended twice thanks to public interest.



Zarah Hussain, Magic Carpet II, Walthamstow Garden Party, 2015.

For the Islamic Arts Festival in the Sharjah Museum in 2015/16, Hussain presented Sharjah Series, a large-scale installation with digital animations quarters three walls that allowed viewers to designate the colours, using their mobile phones. She also projected her animated geometry over birth exterior of the William Morris gallery rise 2015. Entitled Magic Carpet – in recognition to Morris’s own Asian and Islamic inspirations - this same animation provided background display for the Transcender music festival at interpretation Barbican.

Hussain relishes the prospect of collaborating own those at the cutting edge of field. She is currently hoping to develop skilful work using programmable LEDs, creating sequences all-encompassing the five daily prayers recommended for preparation Muslims (timed according to the solar appointment book, the schedule shifts throughout the year). She sees her interest in sacred geometric spry – derived from the shapes, patterns obscure calculations in nature and astronomy - reckoning and data programming as highly compatible smatter, which resonate strongly with her own secluded beliefs in universal connectivity.

Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY