Hamja Ahsan

Hamja Ahsan is a award-winning artist, writer, curator and activist based in London.
He is best known for the book Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert, recently made into a film, that envisions a utopic homeland for quiet, awkward and neurodiverse peoples. Based on the language and formats of Liberation movements - he imagines a Black Panthers for introverts struggling against Extrovert-supremacy. He was awarded the Grand Prize at Ljubljana Biennial 2019 for the art work Aspergistan Referendum based on this book. His transdisclipinary art practice weaves inside and outside the artworld, progressive movements, mental health institutuons, muslim diasporic spaces, in the form of speaker-tours, coining critical languages, zine fairs, building archives and collections, as well as exhibition spaces.
He founded the DIY Cultures festival that from 2013-2017 in London - the UK biggest zine fair and creative activism. He continues to build archives and collection on zines, specialising in mental health zines, prisons, neurodiversity, muslim diasporas, decolonialisation - since he first started making and collecting zines in early 1990s. He is part of the editorial collective for Asylum - the radical mental health magazine and contributes to the Mad Zine research project.
He has toured his books and art project around the world most recently in Peru, Hay Festival, Arequipa 2024, NY Art Book Fair at MOMA PS1; Gwangju Biennale; Shanaakht festival, Karachi; and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Warsaw, to the Phillipines, Bangladesh and Indonesia. He was recently a resident artist at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht in 2020–21, Santa Monica arts centre in Barcelona 2023. Within the UK, he has exhibited and presented widely from Tate Modern to Glasgow CCA to Dolly Sen-curated group exhibition “Art & Protest: What’s there to be Mad About” in 2019 at Bethlem Gallery.
His most recent exhibition was titled My Brother is Back at WIP Space, London, marking 10 years of his brother Talha Ahsan freedom after detention without trial, extradition and solitary confinement under the War on terror. This exhibition curated an archival retrospective of Free Talha Ahsan campaign, which Ahsan ran, which was shortlisted for the Liberty Human Rights Award in 2013.
He is currently working on his 2nd book Radical Chicken about his Documenta 15 project on Halal Fried Chicken shops.
Links:
www.hamjaahsan.com/