Zarina Bhimji

[6] In 2001, Bhimji had her first solo exhibition in the U.S., Cleaning the Garden, at Talwar Gallery, New York[7] and won the EAST award at EASTinternational selected by Mary Kelly and Peter Wollen.

[9] From 2003 to 2007, she travelled widely in India, East Africa and Zanzibar, studying legal documents and the stories of those who formed British power in those countries, carrying out interviews and taking photographs.

Reference to it is sometimes explicit – a row of guns awaiting use in Illegal Sleep, yet sometimes only implied – the hanging, disconnected and electrical wires in my Burnt my heart ... Bhimji captures her sites with relentless formal concerns intended to convey qualities of universal human emotion and existence – grief, longing, love and hope.

Bhimji creates poetic narratives by editing and repeating these details, as if constructing a musical composition, to explore what archives do, how they categorise and how they reveal institutional ideologies.

The work also combines digital and physical crafts – including the use of embroidery for the first time in Bhimji's practice – drawing attention to textures and traces, light and shadow.