Haroon Mirza

British, b.1977

About

Works online

Past exhibition at Sifang

Haroon Mirza was born in London, UK in 1977 where he lives and works. He has a MA degree in Design Critical Practice and Theory from Goldsmiths College, London, UK (2006) and a MA degree in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK (2007). He was awarded the Northern Art Prize (2011), the Silver Lion at Venice Biennale(2011), the DAIWA Foundation Art Prize (2012), the Zurich Art Prize (2013), the Nam June Paik Art Center Prize (2014), the Calder Art Prize (2015) and the COLLIDE International Award in 2017 which has given place to a two-month residency at CERN, Switzerland in the course of 2018.

Mirza has won international acclaim for installations that test the interplay and friction between sound and light waves and electric current. He devises sculptures, performances and immersive installations and as an advocate of interference (in the sense of electro-acoustic or radio disruption), he creates situations that purposefully cross wires. He describes his role as a composer, manipulating electricity, a live, invisible and volatile phenomenon, to make it dance to a different tune and calling on instruments as varied as household electronics, vinyl and turntables, LEDs, furniture, video footage and existing artworks to behave differently. Processes are left exposed and sounds occupy space in an unruly way, testing codes of conduct and charging the atmosphere. Mirza asks us to reconsider the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music, and draws into question the categorisation of cultural forms. “All music is organised sound or organised noise,” he says. “So as long as you’re organising acoustic material, it’s just the perception and the context that defines it as music or noise or sound or just a nuisance” (2013).

Selected recent solo exhibitions have been held in at: Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2018); Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA, USA (2018); Farol Santander, São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark (2018); Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK (2017); Pivô , São Paulo, Brazil (2016); Nam June Paik Center, Seoul, South Korea (2015); Matadero, Madrid, Spain (2015); Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland (2015); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich, Switzerland (2014); Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, Poissy, France (2014); IMMA, Dublin, Ireland (2014); Le Grand Café, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Saint-Nazaire, France (2014). His recent commissions include: Beyond the Wave Epoch, V-A-C Zattere, Venice, Italy (2019) and Stone Circle, Ballroom Marfa, USA (2018), and his work was included in the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, China (2012) and the 54th Venice Biennale, Italy (2011) where he was awarded the Silver Lion.