Artist talk with Uzair Amjad

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17.04.2025 Artist talk with Uzair Amjad
on “Waiting as an Alert Readiness, Waiting to Strike, Waiting as a Politics"

at 10–11.30 on Zoom (request link via info@taidekoulumaa.fi)

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This lecture reflects on artistic practice as a form of waiting, drawing on the process behind the artist’s recent exhibition of paintings, The Terrain Between.

To make art is often to wait—not passively, but with the tension of a coiled spring. The artist listens. Observes. Gathers. Beneath the surface, there is a quiet alertness. The artist waits—because to speak too soon is to be misunderstood, but to wait too long is to fade. You must catch it in the moment it stirs. Until then, the work lies in creating the conditions for that stirring to occur.

Uzair Amjad (b. 1989) is a Pakistani filmmaker and visual artist based in Helsinki. His work probes the intersections of micro-histories and neocolonial frameworks. Amjad cross references the two to expose the contradictions in their perspectives, aiming to make room for new critical interpretations of history.

He holds an MA in Visual Culture, Curating, and Contemporary Arts from Aalto University, Finland, and studied filmmaking at the Academy of Moving People and Images.

Image credits: Samra Šabanović

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[Image description: A screenshot of a message exchange between the artist's friends, Samra and Elham, dated 14 February 2025 at 20:03. The artist sits at a patterned table in a cozy café, eating from a Styrofoam takeaway box. He wears a black coat over layered winter clothing, with wavy hair falling around his face and a small earring in his left ear. The table holds two clear glasses, a beanie, antihistamines, and a hand sanitizer tube. Behind him, framed paintings of a snowy mountain landscape and an abstract figure hang on the wall, lit by a strip of blue LED lights. A caption reads: “Dear Elham, thank you for giving Uzair, we are not yet st rhe party lol 🥴,” with a typo likely meant to say “at the party.”]