Bio:
Zahra Jewanjee is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in the UAE. She holds her BFA from the National College of Arts, Pakistan, and an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. My work investigates the idea of organized chaos through collective behaviors driven by the human need to belong. By observing group dynamics through the lens of entropy and evolution, I seek to dissolve, renegotiate, and reimagine habitual boundaries. Drawing from science, Sufism, and mythology, the work looks at how groups connect and disconnect, forming borders that shape both individual and collective experiences while engaging with themes of agency and marginalization. Through this process, I offer a form of visual poetry that operates as an anthropological response, exploring the landscape as a vessel that holds memory, myth, intervention, and possibility.
Zahra was awarded the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship and Full Scholarship in 2016. She received the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Grant 2024 and the Art Jameel, the Research and Practice Platform - Project Grant. Her residencies include the Djerassi Artist Residency Program in California, Residency Unlimited in New York, Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, USA, Konvent Residencia in Spain, and Campus Art Dubai Residency in the UAE. She exhibits nationally and internationally, and her work was featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale, RISD NatureLab, Harper's Bazaar Arabia, MAS Context Chicago, Guernica Magazine, and TakeonArt. Zahra is the founder of the SoZa Collective and teaches at the American University in Dubai.
