Tribute to World Refugee Week

On Shehzil Malik's work in the exhibition Forgive Us Our Trespasses: Of (Un)Real Frontiers, Of (Im)Moralities and Other Transcendences, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2024

Shehzil Malik

1993, Lahore, lives and works in Berlin

Work in the exhibition: Tribute to World Refugee Week (2023), textile print, 350 × 330 cm. Courtesy of the artist

In her artistic practice, Shehzil Malik examines feminism and how it is linked to socio-political questions of gender-based violence, injustice, and colorism. Her practice is simultaneously influenced by American comic books and cartoons she watched when she was growing up, as well as Pakistani architecture, textiles, and clothing. In designing projects around social change, such as creating a feminist clothing line, which she claims gives women ownership over what they wear and how they dress, or in organizing participatory art and storytelling classes in public spaces, she values community engagement and responsiveness in the everyday. Her work in the exhibition, Tribute to World Refugee Week (2023), is a textile print that contemplates and documents the devastation of war, displacement, and exile. Her work pays close attention to the material and immaterial consequences of war by highlighting the perilous journeys migrants undertake when fleeing war, while still incorporating details such as personal touches to their clothing and belongings that get brought along in the work as the depicted migrants unapologetically seek refuge in different countries. The role of women in these journeys is underscored as they are shown as the figures that guide displaced populations by being at the front of the file. Through these layers of imagery, which highlight different perilous forms of migration as seen in the resilience with which displaced persons move across both water and land, her work reaches for a new visual language midway between poetry and protest.