Moonis Ahmad (b.1992) born in Kashmir is an artist whose practice transverses various media such as installation, sculpture, computer programming, sound, and video. His work through the intersection of art, philosophical speculation and historical enquiry seeks to contemplate the emergence of new worlds and heretical flights of time and objects to critically address the questions of territory, language, belonging, gatherings, and borders. He completed his doctoral research at The University of Melbourne in 2022. He has shown his work at various solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally such as “Anarchic Archive: Spectres of Inconsistency” 2021 at The Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, Melbourne, Australia 2021; “Atlas Holding the Heavens” at Vadhera Contemporary, New Delhi, India 2019; India Art Fair, Notes on Tending, FICA, 2022; “Beyond Boundaries”, at Auckland Art Fair in New-Zealand, 2018 amongst many others. He has participated in various residential programmes such as his three-month Residency at Stadtgalerie & HSLU, in Switzerland organized by Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council amongst others. He is one of the co-authors of an upcoming publication by Raqs Media Collective called “Hungry for time” published by Spector Books 2022. He is a recipient of Arts House, Makeshift Publics Programme 2022-23 in Melbourne Australia and has also won the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art’s Emerging Artist Award, 2017-18. He was also awarded the Schloss Solitude Fellowship 2022-23. He was a recipient of the Australian Graduate Research and Training Programme scholarship. Currently, he works as a Sessional Lecturer at The University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Fine Arts and is based in Melbourne.
Rahul Kumar
(Art Critic, StirWorld)
Subjects of satire and violence in the art of Moonis Shah bring to focus the idea of using archival data as a tool to classify and control.
Huma Mulji
(Artist)
His independence and highly developed sense of social justice, metaphor and meaning, give him an unusual sophistication for his age. As an artist, Moonis creates multi disciplinary works, which traverse video, image, objects, mechanics and courageously: silence. This particularly illuminates his interest in historical erasure. Despite the subject Moonis engages with, he has a highly developed understanding of the absurd and his work often combines a number of elements in an eccentric and humorous way, using irony to critique structures of power.
Cecilia Guida
(Director University of Ideas)
Moonis has engaged brilliantly in creative and critical discourse investigating the relationship between arts and the public sphere, and working at the intersection of artistic practice and academic research.
Detailed CV
Upcoming Events
Jan 2023 | Group show, Curated by Premjish Achari | The Guild| New Delhi, IND
April 2023 | Artist in Residence | Schloss Solitude| Stuttgart, Germany
May 2023 | Group Show |The Arts House| Melbourne, Australia
