In this episode of Alt + Shift + Studio, artist Umber Majeed talks about the various sites and spaces that make up her studio. Umber highlights the tensions between the physical and digital realms in which her practice resides. She describes her studio as an interface between her hard drives, binders of archival material in Lahore and New York, printers and scanners, and a green screen.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Umber Majeed is a multidisciplinary visual artist, working in New York and Pakistan. She received her MFA from Parsons School of Design, New York (2016) and graduated from Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan (2013). Majeed has taken part in group exhibitions, including, Promises to Keep, Apexart, New York (2017), Karachi Biennale – Witness, Karachi, Pakistan (2017), and Volumes – Queens International, Queens Museum, New York (2018). In October 2018, she had her debut solo exhibition ‘In the Name of Hypersurface of the Present’ at Rubber Factory, NY. She is the recipient of fellowships including the HWP Fellowship, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon (2017), Refiguring Feminist Futures – Web Residency, Akademie Schloss Solitude & ZKM, Germany (2018), The Digital Earth, Hivos, the Netherlands (2018-19), and Technology Residency, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, USA (2020).

Alt+Shift+Studio is a series of conversations and video tours that examine the intersection of infrastructures and ideas in contemporary artistic practice. The episodes explore a redefinition of artist studios in the 21st century, breaking away from the traditional image of an isolated space of production. Drawing inspiration from ‘City as Studio’ project by Sarai (2010-2013, Delhi), the series invites artists to share the shifting infrastructures and networks that enable artistic production and the different ways they conceive the space of a studio: the studio as an interface, the studio as a space for gatherings, the studio as a structure, the portable studio that moves with each residency programme, and several more sites and improvisations inform this discussion.
Series editing by: Nikhil KC
An initiative by Ishara Art Foundation
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