Tazeen Qayyum
Canada
Tazeen Qayyum (b.73 ) is a contemporary Pakistani/Canadian artist. She received her BFA in Visual Arts from the National College of Arts Lahore, Pakistan in 1996. Her work has received several critical reviews including in The Canadian Art (2018), The New York Times (2009) and The Globe and Mail, Canada (2011 & 2015). She was nominated for the Jameel Prize (2013) and K.M. Hunter Award (2014), and received the Excellence in Art Award 2015 by the CCAI (Canadian Community Arts Initiative), and has been awarded many grants throughout her career, including UNESCO bursary (2000) to work and exhibit in Vienna. Primarily trained as a miniature painter of the South Asian and Persian tradition, Qayyum continues to explore new materials and processes through mediums such as drawing, installation, sculpture, video and performance. Repetition, rhythm, balance, and geometry are methodological devices that allows her to create artworks that are visually complex and offer a multi-layered understanding of material and techniques used. Drawing from complex issues of belonging and displacement within a socio-political and religious context, her art is a way for her to navigate identity and beliefs living in the diaspora.