JALA WAHID
Artist Profile
Jala Wahid is a Kurdish-British artist working across sculpture, moving image, installation and writing. Her practice examines the symbolic and emotional residues of nationalism, diaspora and contested territory, with particular attention to the political and cultural histories of Kurdistan.
Jala Wahid’s work often draws on music, performance and poetic language, treating sound and image as carriers of collective memory. Materials are chosen for their emotive charge: wax, resin, pigment and textile frequently appear in installations that feel both sensuous and destabilising. Through this material vocabulary, she explores how identity is shaped by displacement, myth and geopolitical fragmentation.
Jala Wahid completed her BA at Goldsmiths, University of London, before graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2019. Since then, Wahid has established an ambitious international exhibition profile. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at institutions including the ICA London, Nottingham Contemporary, and Chisenhale Gallery, as well as in international contexts across Europe and the Middle East.
In 2022, Jala Wahid was selected for the 59th Venice Biennale as part of the Kurdish Pavilion — a landmark moment that positioned her work within a global platform addressing statelessness and cultural autonomy. Her practice continues to engage with questions of sovereignty, land and belonging through immersive installations and filmic works that merge the personal with the political.
Across media, Jala Wahid constructs environments that hold longing and resistance in tension — foregrounding how homeland can exist simultaneously as geography, memory and fiction.
