Moshtari Hilal is a visual artist, writer and curator based in Hamburg and Berlin.
Hilal studied Islamic Studies and Political Science with a focus on Gender and Decolonial Theory in Hamburg, Berlin and London. She is co-founder of the collective AVAH (Afghan Visual Arts and History) and the research project CCC (Curating Through Conflict with Care) as part of ngbk in Berlin. Together with political geographer Sinthujan Varatharajah, Hilal published September 2022 at Wirklichkeit Books the conversation book "English in Berlin - Exclusions in a Cosmopolitan Society". Varatharajah and Hilal were awarded the supporting price for critique by the Lessing Academy Wolfenbüttel for their joint work. Hilal is also one of four Villa Serpentara 2023 fellows awarded by the Young Academy of Arts in Berlin and hosted by the Villa Massimo in Rome. Hilal's essayistic debut "Hässlichkeit" (Ugliness) will be published by Hanser in September 2023.
With a particular interest in analog drawing and collage, Moshtari Hilal considers her overarching practice to be interdisciplinary and process-oriented. While her work begins with the personal and subjective as a resource and starting point, the process includes research, collaborative and collective practice, and the critical engagement and curatorial mediation with the public. Hilal describes her artistic practice as reconciling with shame and negated beauty, and seeks to understand and critique power and colonial continuities in visual culture. Her practice is informed by (self-)portraits and informal family archives, which she employs in eclectic ways in her search for a visual language.
Her work deals with recurring motifs, such as the prominent nose, black hair, the figure of the mother and unreliable childhood memories. Thus, the artist works with the drawn line as a means and symbol of a figurative vocabulary that refers to the black-haired body, as well as visual noise and low resolution, as a method to access precarious material.
List of Selected Exhibitions and Artist Talks
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Solo-Shows
The Warm Pillow was My Mother, The Blanket My Father
12.12.-17.01.2020 Hamburg, Âme Nue
The Black Haired Bomb
21.-23.08.2019 Berlin, Pop-Kultur Festival
BANAL – an exploration of everyday aesthetics
27.10.-04.11.2018 London, Enclave Lab/Goldsmith University
The Angle of a Phallus is Equal to the Angle of a Nose
13.04.-14.04.2018 Hamburg, Galerie 21/Vorwerk-Stiftung
Das Mädchen mit dem Damenbart
30.11.-30.01.2016 Berlin, Literarisches Kolloquium Berlin
Double-Shows
Selbstähnlich (mit Cihan Cakmak) 02.06.-07.8.2022 Frankfurt, basis
STRUKTUR (mit Barbara Lüdde) 04.10.-24.10.2020 Hamburg, Feinkunst Krüger
Group-Shows
CANONS
09.01.-06.02.2021 Paris, Galerie Derouillon
The Flowers of Evil
29.09.-13.01.2019 Sopot, Sopot National Gallery of Art
La Nuit de l’Instant c’est l’imagination au pouvoir
13.-14.09.2019 Marseille, Centre Photographique Marseille
When My Mother Entered My Work
03.-07.07.2019 Beirut, Beirut Design Week
Tanawo
15.-18.03.2018 Hamburg, Affenfaust Gallery
Self
10.11.2017 Barcelona, Museu del Disseny
Nimrouz – The First Global Visual Arts Exhibition of Afghanistan
03.- 17.11.2017 Tehran, Niavaran-Complex
South Asian Evocations and Becomings
27.10.2017 New York City, China Town Soup
Atelier Identity
26.05- 14.06.2017 Berlin, Heinrich Böll Stiftung
Empathy Won’t Save Us
08.09.2016 Hannover, CLINCH Postcolonial Festival
Art Amongst War: Visual Culture in Afghanistan 1979-2014
05.03.-17.04.2014 New Jersey, TCNJ-Art Gallery Vorträge
Lectures and Talks
Hässlichkeit Verlernen
07.09.2021 Osnabrück, VIELEN, Museumsquartier Osnabrück
Hässlichkeit Verlernen - Über künstlerische Praxis und koloniale Sehgewohnheiten
26.02.2020 Hamburg, MARKK
Zeichnen als Semi-dokumentarische Skulptur
05.11.2019 Hamburg, HfBK
Creating Beyond the Collective Other
25.07.2019 Bamberg, Symposium an der Universität Bamberg Residenz/Workshop
Residency
The Crack begins Within
Okt-Nov 2020 Berlin, Kurator*innen Workshop der Berlin Biennale 11
Haramacy
24.-27.04.2019 London, Albany
International Artists Studio Programme
31. 07 -30. 09.2017 Gothenburg, Konstepidemin