Jamelie Hassan


Jamelie Hassan is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, lecturer, writer and independent curator.

Early life and education

Hassan was born in London, Ontario to a Lebanese immigrant family and grew up in an Arabic speaking household with ten siblings. Her maternal grandfather and her father travelled from mountain villages in Lebanon to North America in the early 1900s, fleeing Turkish military conscription and World War I.
After completing her high school studies, Hassan travelled to Rome in 1967 and to Beirut in 1968, where she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Rome and then the Académie libanaise des beaux-arts, Beirut. This trip to Lebanon confirmed her Lebanese cultural background. Upon her return to Canada, she established an artist's studio and became active in the cultural community of London, Ontario. She sold her first work of art in 1971.
Hassan is a Graduate of the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario. In 1978-79, she travelled to Baghdad, Iraq, and studied Arabic at Al-Mustansiriya University. Extensive travel continues to enrich her work, which often reflects this artist's respect for popular, traditional and indigenous art forms.

Themes

In 1976–1977, Hassan was politicized by encountering postcolonial cultures during her travels in Central and South America. Hassan started exhibiting ceramics or fiberglass objects called 'actualizations'.
Her installation-based art practice spans over thirty years and is both personal and political. It addresses worldwide concerns on racism, the subjection of women, cultural interactions, colonialism and political conflicts. Hassan often works with traditional or contemporary cultural artifacts, to make cross-cultural references, such as cultural displacement, Argentinian dictatorship, or the narratives of intersecting cultures.
A survey exhibition in 2009 at Museum London in London Ontario, combined elements of photography, text, ceramics, neon light and video to tie in language and the politics of place that connects Hassan as a Canadian artist to her Arabic background.
In 1983, Hassan co-founded the London artist cooperative, Embassy Cultural House, serving on its board from 1985 to 1990.

Projects and collaborations

Among the projects in which Hassan has taken part are:

Selected Solo Exhibitions

In 2001, Hassan received a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in recognition of her artistic achievement. Her activism, curatorial work and contributions to the artist-run centre movement in Canada were also mentioned by the jury in their statement.
In 2018, OCAD University, Toronto conferred honorary doctorate degrees upon four prominent Canadians: visual artist Jamelie Hassan, fashion journalist Jeanne Beker, filmmaker David Cronenberg, and Dr. William Reichman, CEO of Baycrest Health Sciences.