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photo - Luka Alagiyawanna
Abdul Halik Azeez is a multidisciplinary artist and organizer living in Sri Lanka. Inhabiting the absurdities and paradoxes of late capitalism and conflict at work in his environment, he operates from the uncertain position of embeddedness within the very phenomena he speaks to. As opposed to excavated or analyzed, meaning is recognized as always taking place in the present, being produced constantly through intricate webs of interconnections. Through ethnographic interventions and the sampling of diverse archives, Azeez juxtaposes and remixes, tracing cosmologies which attempt to connect that which otherwise cannot be connected.
In 2019, along with artist and curator Sandev Handy, Azeez co-founded The Packet. Committed to Fred Moten’s idea of collective study as “what you do with other people”, The Packet produces a field akin to a jam session, where a collective of emerging artists from Sri Lanka, committed to hyperlocality, playfulness and collaborative process, think together in public. Azeez is also currently co-organizing a three year project with Berlin based musician Jackie Poloni. Taking wetlands as a commonly held archive and point of departure, WET LAND brings twelve artists from Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Germany and Pakistan to explore the fluid space of artistic research as well as new terrains for collaboration.
Azeez has received grants from Prince Claus Fund, the Sharjah Art Foundation and Pro Helvetia New Delhi. His installations, films, photographs and publications have recently been presented in exhibitions and festivals at Videobrasil (2023), the British Film Institute (2023), Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia (2023), Berlinale (2023), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2023), Sharjah Art Foundation (2022), documenta fifteen (2022), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sri Lanka (2022) and multiple editions of Colomboscope.
email: halikazeez@gmail.com
instagram: @colombedouin
vimeo: https://vimeo.com/halik
In 2019, along with artist and curator Sandev Handy, Azeez co-founded The Packet. Committed to Fred Moten’s idea of collective study as “what you do with other people”, The Packet produces a field akin to a jam session, where a collective of emerging artists from Sri Lanka, committed to hyperlocality, playfulness and collaborative process, think together in public. Azeez is also currently co-organizing a three year project with Berlin based musician Jackie Poloni. Taking wetlands as a commonly held archive and point of departure, WET LAND brings twelve artists from Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Germany and Pakistan to explore the fluid space of artistic research as well as new terrains for collaboration.
Azeez has received grants from Prince Claus Fund, the Sharjah Art Foundation and Pro Helvetia New Delhi. His installations, films, photographs and publications have recently been presented in exhibitions and festivals at Videobrasil (2023), the British Film Institute (2023), Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia (2023), Berlinale (2023), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2023), Sharjah Art Foundation (2022), documenta fifteen (2022), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sri Lanka (2022) and multiple editions of Colomboscope.
email: halikazeez@gmail.com
instagram: @colombedouin
vimeo: https://vimeo.com/halik