Shalalae Jamil

Born in 1978 in Karachi (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Karachi (Pakistan)

Shalalae Jamil was born and raised in Pakistan and educated at Bennington College, USA and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA. She has exhibited work in Pakistan and India, the US and the UK. She has been on the faculty of Beaconhouse National University, Lahore; National College of Arts, Lahore; and the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, where she was head of the Postgraduate Diploma Course In Photography. Her work is in several private collections, including the Arts Council in Pakistan and the Devi Art Foundation in India. Using photography, film, video, installation and elements of performance, she continually investigates how perception and meaning are altered by the shifting parameters of private and public space. Sometimes poetic, but often straightforward, her work uses the generic to address unspoken aspects of shared experience.

Of her work for KB17, Shalalae Jamil writes: “The name Kodak and its visual branding have been, for the major part of the last century, synonymous with the rise and dominance of photography as a popular art form. This body of work brings attention to the brand’s signage as it appears currently in Karachi: beleaguered, fading and becoming increasingly irrelevant. Witness to an era, to the processes of change and disintegration, to the inevitable clash between old and new; the at once beautiful and distressed symbol is emblematic in the most profound way, carrying with it the past, present and future of photographic practice. It is this history and ‘now-ness’ that I grapple with, through a series of photographs that are simultaneously a tribute and a space for reflection.”