University of Westminster Reader in Architecture Shahed Saleem has designed an installation at V&A Storehouse as part of V&A East’s New Work commissions programme. His work explores the programme’s first theme, Making East London, and focuses on today’s anti-immigration policies and language in relation to histories of exclusion.
Saleem’s project titled I Was Born Here was commissioned as part of New Work, V&A East’s biannual creative commissions programme where artists create work in response to a theme, exploring how art and design interact with daily life. The programme’s first theme, Making East London, reflects on the area’s past and possible futures.
I Was Born Here places three tapestries designed by Saleem under the 15th century Torrijos ceiling at V&A East Storehouse. The ceiling was made during a time when Spain’s colonial empire was expanding and a monarchy focused on religious and ethnic purity replaced centuries of cultural exchange. Through the installation, Saleem questions how ideas of ethnic and cultural purity, prevalent at the time the Torrijos ceiling was created, continue to echo in our language and politics today.
Visitors under Torrijos ceiling
The tapestries question how current anti-immigration policies and language draw on longer histories of exclusion. The first tapestry titled Queen’s Market celebrates the diversity, creativity and commerce of Newham’s Queens Market. The second tapestry, Home Office, references the Home Office vans that circulated east London in 2013 encouraging self-deportation. The third tapestry, For God and Gold, combines political references from late fifteenth-century Spain with racialised struggles in east London.
Saleem is a researcher at Westminster’s School of Architecture + Cities whose work focuses on the architecture of migrant and diasporic communities and their relationship to heritage, belonging and nationhood. He is also the Founder of the East London architectural practice Makespace which works with a range of clients, including faith communities, to design and deliver places of worship.
V&A Storehouse East
Saleem’s work reflects the University’s institutional commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and strategic priority of being a place where everyone is welcome.
About the installation Saleem said: “Though this work I am exploring the historical parallels between what was happening in Spain in the 15th century and the political climate in the UK today in terms of a rising nationalism and the targeting of minorities. The large-scale fabrics evoke tapestries that would have adorned the walls of the medieval room under the Torrijos ceiling and cushions are placed on the floor so that people are invited to inhabit the room to look up and the ceiling and at the new work.”
Find about more about Architecture, Interiors and Planning courses at the University of Westminster.
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