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Moshtari Hilal is a visual artist, writer and curator based in Hamburg and Berlin.

Hilal studied Islamic Studies and Politics with a focus on Gender and Decolonial Studies 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) funded by 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 award 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. Hilal's essayistic debut "Hässlichkeit" (Ugliness) will be published by Hanser in 2023.

With a particular interest in analog drawing, 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 elaboration, and exchange and 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 current practice is informed by (self-)portraits and family archives, which she employs in eclectic ways in her search for a visual language. Thus, the artist works with the drawn line as a means and symbol of a figurative vocabulary that refers to the black-haired body. In addition, her portraits deal with recurring motifs, such as the prominent nose, black hair, the figure of the mother and childhood memories.

List of Selected Exhibitions and Artist Talks

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