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Shezad Dawood: Between Land & Sea
Fogo Island Gallery
December 17 to April 17

The Fogo Island Gallery presented Between Land & Sea, a solo exhibition of work by London-based artist Shezad Dawood featuring textile-based paintings, video, and a 1970s hand-made fishing net reworked by the artist. Materially and culturally specific to Fogo Island, the works emerged from Dawood’s time spent in residence with Fogo Island Arts and through conversations with local craft practitioners, fishers, and other community members. The resulting pieces integrated histories of economic and social processes, land-use, and our evolving relationship to the sea.

Between Land & Sea was accompanied by a series of public programs happening in March and April 2022, featuring invited interdisciplinary speakers in conversation. Combining local, experiential knowledge and current academic research, the programs will address issues of resource extraction, sustainability and marine welfare, situating the exhibition within larger discourses of global concern.

Also on view was Episode 5: Ismael from Dawood’s Leviathan Cycle, commissioned by A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam, Fogo Island Arts, Museum of Contemporary art Toronto (MOCA) and Toronto Biennial of Art. The film takes place primarily on a cargo ship in international waters and combines narrative explorations of globalized trade, maritime law and the rights of the individual with archival footage of Newfoundland fishing and whaling practices, drawing parallels between human and marine species migration, exploration and individual agency.

Artist’s Biography

Shezad Dawood works across the disciplines of painting, film, neon, sculpture, performance, virtual reality and other digital media to ask key questions of narrative, history and embodiment. Using the editing process as a method to explore both meanings and forms, his practice often involves collaboration and knowledge exchange, mapping across multiple audiences and communities. After being trained at Central St Martin’s and the Royal College of Art Dawood undertook a PhD at Leeds Metropolitan University. Dawood is a Research Fellow in Experimental Media at the University of Westminster.

Recent solo exhibitions and commissions include: Visions of Paradise, commission for The White House, Becontree (2021); Concert From Bangladesh, commission for British Council Digital Collaboration Fund (2021); Timothy Taylor, London (2020-21); Kai Art Center, Tallinn (2020); New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2020); The Bluecoat Liverpool (2019); MOCA Toronto (2019); FriezeLIVE, London (2019); Kunstverein, Munich (2019); A Lost Future: Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2018); Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2017). Group exhibitions include: Sea Art Festival, Busan (2021); Paradise Row, London (2021); Folkestone Triennial (2021); Guggenheim, New York (2021); Southbank Centre, London (2020-21); Boghossian Foundation – Villa Empain (2020); WIELS Bruxelles (2020); Manifesta 13 (2020); Lahore Biennial (2020); Dhaka Art Summit (2020); Sharjah Biennial 14, UAE (2019) – Jury Prize for Encroachments.