Shaheen Merali

Merali then continued to work in Europe, Asia and America with exhibitions at the Tokyo Gallery, Budla Gallery, Kunstagenten Gallery, Berlin, Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata; Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam; Brot Kunsthalle, Vienna; Arario Gallery, New York; Freies Museum, Berlin, etc. (see Curatorial Practice). In this period, Merali predominantly works with artists from Iran, Palestine, India and its diasporas. In 2014-2015 he co-curated the main exhibition for the 4th Mediations Biennale, Poland.

In 2008, after his contract with HWK ended, Merali was asked to design and facilitate a new gallery in Berlin for the Bodhi Group, which had spaces in Mumbai, Singapore and New York. He worked with local technicians to create a larger gallery space alongside five other galleries which became known as the BodhiBerlin, which represented artists including Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta and Jitish Kallat.

As an exhibition maker at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Merali curated several exhibitions accompanied by publications which he edited, including The Black Atlantic; Dreams and Trauma - Moving images and the Promised Lands; and Re-Imagining Asia, One Thousand Years of Separation. Merali was the co-curator of the 6th Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2006) and the co-curator of Berlin Heist or the enduring fascination of walled cities for the 4th Mediations Biennale, Poland (2014-2015).

Upon relocating to Berlin, Merali initially worked with a devolved programme of two large-scale exhibitions: DisORIENTation curated by Jack Persekian; and Body City with Geeta Kapour and Jyotinder Jain. During his five-year contract with HKW, in 2006 Merali was granted permission to research and work with Professor Wu Hung on the 6th Gwangju Biennale. Merali then spent considerable time between Berlin and Korea, researching and collaborating with the biennale staff, specifically looking at both Asian artists and artists working about Asia. The working relationship with Professor Wu Hung continued at the University of Chicago, where they co-curated Re-Imagining Asia – A Thousand Years Of Separation. Further, Merali, Wu Hung and Christopher Philips worked together for the Berlin installation of the historic exhibition Between Past and Future, which had started at the ICP, New York, then toured to HWK, Berlin, and finally to the V&A, London.

In 2000, same year as when Panchayat won an open call for the Rich Mix Project, Merali co-curated Slow Release at Bishopsgate Goodsyard, London, which included new commissions by Edwina Fitzpatrick and installations by Dinh Q Le and Simryn Gill. Merali continued his work as an artist, participating in group shows, such as Out of India, Queens Museum, curated by Jane Farver, and Transforming the Crown, Bronx Museum of Art, curated by Mora Beauchamp-Byrd (see Artistic practice). With the development of curation as a practice and shows which were bringing him curatorial acknowledgement, the issue of artists being curators and vice versa emerged. Following publications, such as Eddie Chambers' Crowning folly in Art Monthly, Merali decided to avoid the possible collision of interests which can arise when curators are curating their own work. Unwilling to define others through one's own practice, Merali focused on the curatorial. By that time Merali was already lecturing at Saint Martins's School of Art and University of Westminster, and in 2003 he was offered the position at Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Upon his return to London, Merali continued to work with young adults and children in formal and informal education sectors, including schools, community services and young offenders' centres. Eventually, with support of Haringey Arts Council, he organised a flexible workshop and gallery called One Spirit Batik Centre in Wood Green specialising in working with young adults with disabilities who had English as the second language. Between 1990 and 1991, Merali organised solo exhibitions of Chila Kumari Burman and Tam Joseph, as well as group exhibitions by artists from Soweto, South Africa and print makers from Havana, Cuba. He was consequently invited to exhibit his own work at the University of West Indies, where his one-person exhibition was programmed alongside a concert by Don Cherry. In early 1989, Merali met the curators and the directors of the forthcoming 3rd Havana Biennale, including Geraldo Mosquera and Liliane Llanes. They implemented Merali's proposal of participation of five Black and Asian artists, living in Britain but coming from a global diaspora, to be included in what was, until then, the dedicated Southern World biennale. Returning from Cuba in 1988, Merali organised the works of the five artists, Sonia Boyce, Allan de Souza, Pitika Ntuli and Keith Piper alongside his own work to be exhibited in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, as well as at the Institute of Education, London. The experience in Havana formalised the working relationship of exhibition making and the possibility of archiving through curating.

Merali is the co-organiser, as part of the 1989 Collective, of the International conference 1989 This is Tomorrow—De-canonisation and decolonisation, at the Courtauld Institute. He has started writing his debut fictional novel in 2019, as well as co-editing for the first volume (of six) in a series contingently titled Artefacts of Solidarity— Critical Pasts, Impending Futures, for London-based MAPT (Merali and Pachkhédé Texts).

In 1988, Merali co-founded the Panchayat Arts Education Resource Unit in and around Spitafields Market. The Unit's main function was one of collecting ephemera, documents and publications. The collection provided research material aimed to illustrate the link between modern and contemporary art and activism through archival practices focused on the work of South Asian, Black and issue-based artists in the United Kingdom and internationally. The Panchayat archival material was donated and is now part of the Tate library's Special Collection in London.

Merali's commitment to the community education presented itself with further opportunities: in 1988 he became involved with a group of artists, Bhajan Hunjan, Symrath Patti, Allan de Souza and Shanti Thomas, who initially met at the Slade School of Art to discuss the possibilities of an organisation in a self-funded way. Merali and de Souza volunteered and became the responsible administrators of the Panchayat Arts Education Resource Centre. The organisation was involved with publishing, exhibitions and workshops, alongside its principal function of collecting the material as a record of those times. Panchayat focused on the growing connection of Black and Asian artists with a globalising art world, as well as documenting their expression relating to intersection between race, class, gender, policed sexualities and (dis)ability. In 2015, the Collection was donated as a gift to the Tate Library.

Merali emerged as an artist in the 1980s. In his early artistic practice his medium of choice was drawing, collage and batik. Work with batik enabled the artist to question the conventional distinction between "art" and "craft", by bringing the latter into the space of gallery exhibition dedicated to 'fine art'. Another convention that Merali battled with was one of batik's decorative functions: his artistic practice consistently revolved around personal, social and political narratives. From batik work, Merali shifted towards mixed media, video and installation art.

Shaheen Merali (born 1959) is a Tanzanian writer, curator, critic, and artist. Merali began his artistic practice in the 1980s committing to social, political and personal narratives. As his practice evolved, he focused on functions of a curator, lecturer and critic and has now moved into the sphere of writing. Previously he was a key lecturer at Central Saint Martins School of Art (1995-2003), a visiting lecturer and researcher at the University of Westminster (1997-2003) and the Head of the Department of Exhibition, Film and New Media at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2003-2008). A regular speaker on ideas of contemporary exhibition making internationally, in 2018 he was the keynote speaker at the International Art Gallery of the Aga Khan Diamond Jubilee Arts Festival, Lisbon.

Merali was born in 1959 in Tanganyika, now known as Tanzania. His family left India and arrived to Tanganyika in the early 20th century as part of the British colonial campaign to explore to explore its colonial labour policy following its indentured labour policy. The South Asian labour was sent to East Africa to assist the further urbanisation and industrialisation of the East African territories. Merali's mother was born in Mombasa, Kenya, and his father was born in Mwanza, Tanganyika. A decade after the independence, Merali's family came to the UK as British subjects. Merali, then 11 years old, and his family settled in Borough of Enfield, North London. Merali attended Arnos School and then later Southgate college. He then completed his Foundation Course in Art and Design in Barnet College. After graduating, he attended Gwent College of Education, now known as Gwent College, Newport, where he did his undergraduate in sculpture. After graduating, Merali continued to live in Newport for a further year during which he worked with young adults on community based projects, focusing on housing estates.