Profiling: Mariam Suhail

For the third iteration of Profiling, Mariam Suhail invites participants to take a closer look at our digital existence as part of our physical being. 

How to Light Yourself is an instructional pamphlet outlining the process of lighting for the presentation of one's self in the online realm, featuring a combination of text and diagram the ring-light becomes the central idiom utilized to impart messaging about ‘new-living.’ This manual highlights the two main frameworks for considering how our physical selves might overlap with our digital selves, whether it be fully intertwined or considered a secondary component of our identity. This step-by-step guide prompts not only the philosophical conception of our being, but also provides considerations of self-care for our digital existence. 

About the Artist

Mariam Suhail’s work stems from the incidental, undocumented minutia of conversations, media, culture, and the everyday. She employs language from everyday sources to dissect and re-present what may exist in the spaces between exchanges, ideas, historical events and daily occurrences, resulting in works in sculpture, video, digital images, text, drawing and books.

Mariam’s work has been part of All the World’s Futures, Venice Biennale (2015), Berlin Biennale-8 (2014), Sheher, Prakriti, Devi, Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (2024), Parallel Cities, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, New Delhi (2024), How To Reappear: Through the quivering leaves of Independent publishing, Invitations programme, Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2022), The Missing One at Dhaka Art Summit (2016) & Office of Contemporary Art, Oslo (2016/ 17). Solo exhibitions include, Larger than Life-size Raven on a Roof (2024) and Sweet Subjunctive (2015) at GALLERYSKE, New Delhi, Inhabitate (2020) and Accidental Excavations (2014) at Grey Noise, Dubai, Breakdown of Shorter Concerns (2011) and fig.1. (2009) at GALLERYSKE, Bengaluru.

Mariam has also contributed to publications like Paessagio (Coral Issue) by Blauer Hase (2016), Shifter21 - Other Spaces (2013), Protocollum (2016/17) and Silicon Plateau - Volume 2 (2019). She was also part of the faculty at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi and the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design, BNU, Lahore, between 2002 and 2008.

Profiling

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This summer, we invite you to join us for our remote summer series, Profiling, which will present five artist-designed questionnaires or forms that reconsider how we present ourselves through online profiles, or how the data we input shapes our identity.

Online profiles have been folded into the fabric of our identities, but can we take a step back and reconsider the information we are asked to provide that construct our online digital selves? Alternatively, can we analyze the forms and questionnaires that structure the way we are forced to identify ourselves? These profiles have increasingly become a way of establishing interpersonal relationships. We are forced to fit ourselves into a persona that shapes how we interact and are perceived by others. We check boxes that limit our personality and are thus placed into a category that we might not even identify with. In this series, artists will take a deeper look at the structures that collect data that inform our profiles, rethink what shapes our identities, and expose how the data being collected is used by these invisible entities.

A new iteration will be released on the List Center website every other Wednesday, from June 26 to August 21, 2024. Participants are invited to engage with the series asynchronously throughout the season.

Profiling is organized by Emily Garner, Senior Manager Campus and Public Programs, with Cassidy Westjohn, Program Coordinator.

Participating Artists: Lauren Lee McCarthy, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Mary Stephenson, Mariam Suhail, Anne Le Troter.