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Zainub Verjee CM | |
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| Born | 1956 Nairobi, Kenya |
| Education | BA, Business Administration and Economics, Simon Fraser University |
| Website | Official website |
Zainub Verjee CM, [1] (born 1956) is a Kenya-born Canadian video artist, curator, writer, arts administrator and public intellectual. She began her career in the Vancouver arts community of the 1970s, which was steeped in interdisciplinary, intermedia, and intercultural practices. Having made her mark as an emerging artist, she shifted the emphasis of her work to curatorial, administrative and policy arenas. Applying the insight, creativity and criticality of an artist, she has brought “institutional critique” into the workings of the institution itself. Deeply engaged with the UK’s British Black Arts, Tactical Video Movement, Third Cinema and the post-Bandung Conference decolonization, Verjee has been embedded in the history of women’s labour in British Columbia. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] In February 2020 she was awarded the 2020 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for “outstanding contribution to the arts”. [7] [8] [9] [10] In 2021 she was conferred an honorary doctorate by the OCAD University recognizing her outstanding contribution to arts, racial and gender equity [11] [12] [13] She was elected as a Senior Fellow of the Massey College at University of Toronto in the fall of 2021. [14] [15] [16] Earlier she was appointed as McLaughlin College Fellow at the York University. [17] [18] [19] In 2022 she was conferred Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa, by Nova Scotia College of Art and Design NSCAD University, Halifax [20] [21] She was the recipient of the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts given by Simon Fraser University, Burnaby in the Spring Convocation of 2023. [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] Her contribution to the pioneering prison theatre program in Canada and for integral role in the formation of the British Columbia Arts Council was recognized by University of Victoria by conferring her with an honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts in Spring Convocation in 2023. [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]
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In the summer of 2021, she had a solo show Speech Acts at Centre A:Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. [3] [32] [33] [34] Her work has been shown internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art and the Venice Biennale. She was Film Distribution Manager at the Women in Focus Society, Vancouver. She was involved with the British Black Arts Movement of the 1980s. [35] [36] Zainub offered the connecting link between the Black British Art Movement and Vancouver. [37] In 1989 Verjee cofounded In Visible Colours with Lorraine Chan of the National Film Board, [38] an international film and video festival and symposium featuring the work of women of colour. [39] [40] At the Courtauld Institute of Art in a keynote [41] on In Visible Colours as an experiment in solidarity, Third cinema, women and birth of an aesthetic she spoke of as a witness to the unfolding of the decolonization process. It was the same time period when a new Afro-Asian solidarity emerged in the form of the Bandung Conference—a counter to the West, and a non- Western basis for organizing a non-alignment front to counter the Cold War. [42] Following the success of In Visible Colours, she was invited by the Jeanne Sauvé Youth Foundation to lead a workshop on International Forum 1992: globalization and nationalism at the first International Conference for Young Leaders, Montreal. [43] In 1992 she was awarded National Film Board Fellowship as part of New Initiatives in Film for women of colour and aboriginal women. [44]
She led the Artists’ Coalition for Local Colour, raising racism charges against the Vancouver Art Gallery. [45] [46] [47] [48]
