I have to go tonight, 2022
Zahra Hakim is an artist born in 1983 in Qom, Iran, to an Iraqi immigrant family. Arriving in Switzerland in 2011 with her two daughters and husband, she began attending the École d’art et de design de Genève (HEAD) in 2017. There she completed a BA, followed by a Master’s in Visual Arts. Like a woven textile, her work creates and reveals itself through layers that are successively and patiently added one on top of the other. In every line, the same threads are used: those of the artist’s personal narrative, her dreams, the painful memory of a war, a childhood home, and the care she has given to others and to things.
(Extract from the text written by Alix Debraine)
© Isabelle Meister (portrait)
© Thomas Maisonnasse
Born in 1983 in Iran to Iraqi parents, Zahrasadat Hakim is a visual artist who graduated with a Master’s from HEAD Geneva in 2022. Her memories bear the traces of war, having experienced the Iraq-Iran conflict up close during the first five years of her life. Her constant moving around following this – whether intended or not – along with the different cities and countries where she lived, have shaped her worldview. Based in Geneva since 2011, she works with various media like wood and paint, but also weaving and ceramics, all of which she purposefully approaches as a self-taught artist. The objects and artifacts in her installations focus on questions of belonging, resistance, continuity, care, and femininity through her memories, dreams and observations. Most often, however, her works are tied to the temporary places she rearranges in order to imagine a new living space that is doomed to disappear. For several years she has been composing a series of ceramic works entitled In Search of Lost Places: scale model-type sculptures that represent snippets of her memories.
Instagram @zahra_hakimm
Window display: courtesy of Confédération Centre through the bureau CBRE (contact ines.debavier@cbre.com to rent)
Zahrasadat Hakim
to listen here