Seemab Gul
London, UK
Seemab Gul is a London based artist and filmmaker who initially trained as a fine art painter. Her films interweave documentary, fictional, and performative elements to explore social-political stories. Gul confronts issues of identity via narratives that trace conflict in everyday lives. Within these narratives poetic and abstract devices are interwoven to heighten the sense of reality which she aspires to convey.
In so doing social realism meets with artistic film making to create a social critique that combines poesis with documentation.
Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in current political dialogue, examining conditions of precarity in society and on the outsider experience. The artist participates in long standing debates about mode of representation, point of view and filmmaker bias.
Her 16mm films and videos have been screened and exhibited at Oberhausen Film festival, HotDocs, SXSW, Geneva Contemporary Art Centre and other galleries and festivals internationally. Her works have been commissioned by Arts Council England, CBA WoldView, Channel 4 and Moti Roti Foundation. She completed a C4 Random Acts artist’s film commission, in which performance, porcelain clay created moving sculptures . Her recent short documentary film was on Al Jazeera English and it’s trailer has over 8 million views.
Seemab completed a BA in Fine Art at Surrey Institute of Art & Design in 2001. After undertaking a PACE course in Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths, she completed a Masters in Filmmaking at the London Film School in 2011. In 2013 she was a fellow at the National Film & TV School Film Clinic. She has been a Berlinale Talent and participated in the Locarno Producers Lab.