Mukesh Shah

Mukesh Shah's practice is observing, intuitive and reductive - a juxtaposition of conceptual textual works that frame the zeitgeist and tactile abstract compositions that explore organic materiality in a process of imperfect mark-making.

In the past decade a series of big issues have emerged to define our times and we see demonstrations erupting somewhere every day. Slogans on placards remain the expressive tool of civil protest in the digital age. The Playlist series of 25 reductive slogans uses the powerful relationship between text and image to explore this zeitgeist.

Shah (b 1959, British Indian) is a multi-disciplinary visual artist based in Dubai. He was born in Aden (Yemen) when it was a British Colony. His family emigrated to Bombay in 1967, as the British were leaving and a Marxist paramilitary group formed the new People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. Subsequently, he was educated in the UK from 1976 and lived in London till 2013. He has an MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

EDUCATION

1981           MA, University of Cambridge, UK

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
ARTFAIRS

2022           59th La Biennale di Venezia
Personal Structures 2022
                   Palazzo Mora, Venice
2021           C?N U FEEL IT, XVA Gallery, Dubai
2019           PLAYLIST, XVA Gallery, Dubai
2018           SIKKA Art Fair, Dubai
                   Full Moon Rising, XVA Gallery, Dubai
2017           ArtBAB, Bahrain
2016           In Between, XVA Gallery, Dubai

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2022            Sign Systems, Unit London, London
2019            The Print Show, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai
                    AFA Collective, Fann A Porter, Dubai
                    Summer Exhibition, XVA Gallery, Dubai
2018            Reframed, XVA Gallery, Dubai
Contemporary Art of the Middle East, Wetpaint Gallery, UK
2017            Project 2017, Gallery Elena Shchukina, London

PUBLICATIONS

2021             C?N U FEEL IT
                     Published by Akkadia Press, Edinburgh