Aphra Shemza

Aphra Shemza is a UK-based multimedia artist. She is the granddaughter of the well-known abstract painter Anwar Jalal Shemza. Inspired by her grandfather, her work explores Modernism, her Islamic cultural heritage, sustainable practice and creating art for all. As an artist and activist, she finds ambitious ways to fuse methodologies from the past with new innovations in technology to imagine what the role of art could be in the future.

Shemza combines abstraction with traditional sculpting techniques and technology to create her work. As a sculptor her main medium is light, which she manipulates to create works that change over time. Handmade and bespoke interactive circuits are embedded within the pieces and this creates work which responds to the viewer or the space around it. Just as abstraction was said to be a ‘universal language for the masses’, Shemza has created a new visual language for a contemporary audience - one that explores the impact and legacy of technology on our world.

Shemza works in series. Each series has a different thematic exploration and a different aesthetic quality. From migration to climate change, Shemza explores many themes and ideas within her work and advocates for a sustainable practice. She...

Education

2009 – 2012
BA Hons Fine Art, Middlesex University, London, UK

2008 – 2009
Foundation Art, Chesterfield College, Chesterfield, UK

2020
In the Dark, 8th - 12th January 2020, The Cello
Factory, London, UK
Mars and Beyond, 20th February - 15th March
2020, The Bargehouse, London, UK
2019
Current Climate, The Other Art Fair, 3rd-6th
October 2019, Victoria House, London, UK
Curator and artist: Art in FLUX at the V&A Digital
Design Weekend, 21st-22nd September 2019,
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
Curator and artist: Art in Flux at Event Two, 12th -
17th July, Royal College of Art, London, UK
Curator and artist: Radical Ecology: Sustainable
Media Art, 12th June, Ugly Duck, London, UK
Play Me I’m Your Piano Project, 23rd March 2019 -
22nd April 2020, Canary Wharf Estate, London, UK
Sexy Sakura, 18th March - 15th April 2019, Sexy
Fish Restaurant, London, UK
Totems (selected works), 12th March 2019, Building
Bloqs, London, UK
2018
ING Discerning Eye, 15th-25th November 2018, The
Mall Galleries, London, UK
V & A Digital Futures, 12th July 2018, British
Computer Society, London, UK
Kallida Festival, 21st-24th June 2018, Baskerville
Hall, Wales
Selected Works, April – 12th July 2018, ITS
Clubhouse, London, UK
Curator and artist: ART IN FLUX: Experiments in
Media Arts Now, 31st May – 3rd June 2018, Ugly
Duck, London, UK
Silicon Milk ...