About The Artist
Shiraz Bayjoo is a London-based artist currently working in the Indian Ocean region, whose practice spans painting, photography, and video. Originally from Mauritius, Bayjoo studied at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. Bayjoo was Artist in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK during 2011. His recent solo exhibitions include ‘Rome being the centre’, Operativa Arte, Rome, 2016, ‘A land of extraordinary quarantines’, Greenlease Gallery, USA, 2015, and ‘Ile-de-France’ residency and exhibition at the Institute for International Visual Arts (Iniva), UK, 2015, and 198 Gallery, UK, 2015. Group exhibitions include ‘Homelands’, Artsadmin, 2015, ‘Illuminating Cultures’, Tate Britain, 2010, and New Contemporaries, 2001.
Artist Statement
Shiraz Bayjoo’s practice considers ideas of nationhood and the exploration of identity and histories through the use of photographs and artefacts stored in public and personal archives. Through investigating the legacy of European colonialism, the work explores the complex histories and relationships of migration and trade, and enquires into the challenge of authoring collective identity in the post-colonial world. Bayjoo works with painting, photography, video and installation.
About The Work
Shiraz Bayjoo is a Mauritian artist living in London. Bayjoo frequently uses archival sources as a premise of his multimedia installations which include nineteenth century maps, paintings based on surveys and photographs of the Indian Ocean. His work traces the social and historical contexts of the colonization of ocean spaces which were largely treated as a resource for human control.
Shiraz Bayjoo has participated in the Ephemeral Coast exhibitions Edge Effects, Mauritius, 2016 and These Waters Have Stories To Tell, Swansea, UK, 2018.
Click here to see the Edge Effects trifold, produced in Mauritius in 2016.
