UK art show explores Muslim life, Europe’s Islamic history and Islamophobia

London, United Kingdom – Underneath a 536-year-old Islamic-inspired Spanish extortion successful eastbound London bent 3 tapestries linking the city’s Muslim communities to Europe’s longstanding Muslim histories.

Among the works by creator Shahed Saleem, signs from the British Home Office’s 2013 “Hostile Environment” policy, urging undocumented immigrants to self-deport, are depicted on with images of Muslim shoppers successful London’s divers Queen’s Market and a representation of Altab Ali, a young Bangladeshi antheral who was murdered successful a metropolis parkland successful a racially motivated attack.

The collection, entitled I Was Born Here, is “a communicative of migration and of belonging”, said Saleem, who is besides an architect, writer and academic.

Sitting connected pillows beneath the ceiling, helium invited onlookers to presumption and sermon his exhibition.

Saleem contextualised the works against rising xenophobia, seen precocious during the predetermination wins of Reform UK, an anti-immigrant party, and racist riots successful Belfast, Northern Ireland.

“While I was making the work, I was seeing the expanding radical politics, the hateful clime against … fundamentally each radical that represented migration and processes of immigration,” Saleem told Al Jazeera.

Shahed Saleem, an artist, designer and academic, sits nether the Islamic-inspired Spanish extortion which originated from the cardinal Spanish municipality of Torrijos [Courtesy of David Parry]

‘The themes stay alive’

He was approached by the Victoria and Albert Museum squad successful 2024 to make an grounds for their caller Stratford location, the V&A East Storehouse, which responded to the section assemblage and culture, and to the Torrijos ceiling. The elaborate carved and gilded woody ceiling, which measures 6 by 6 metres (20 x 20 feet), originated from a palace successful the cardinal Spanish municipality of Torrijos.

What followed was hundreds of hours of gathering 3 tremendous tapestries.

The first, named Home Office, depicts verbatim quotes from authorities signage displayed done divers neighbourhoods successful London. Back successful 2013, intimidation tactics were evident successful the connection used: “106 ARRESTS LAST WEEK IN YOUR AREA”, “In the UK Illegally?” and “GO HOME OR FACE ARREST”. They are present woven connected the fabric, against a backdrop of Alhambra patterns – Islamic geometric creation rooted successful medieval Spain.

A panelled tapestry, Altab Ali’s portrait, honours the textile idiosyncratic who was stabbed to decease successful a racially motivated onslaught successful 1978, erstwhile helium was conscionable 24.

There is besides an representation of the voyage of the Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus’s vehicle, funded by the Spanish monarchy, marking the opening of Spain’s colonisation of the alleged “New World” successful 1492.

In the 1400s, contempt centuries of spiritual plurality passim Spain, the Spanish Inquisition began violently targeting Jewish and Muslim communities.

The grounds depicts the diverseness of Britain’s Muslim number [Courtesy of David Parry]

“While this play is often celebrated arsenic the dawn of Spain’s Golden Age, it besides ushered successful 1 of Europe’s astir devastating programmes of spiritual and taste homogenisation,” said Tharik Hussain, historian, question writer and writer of Muslim Europe: A Journey successful Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History.

“Over the period that followed, and successful those starring up to it, hundreds of thousands of European Muslims and Jews were forced into exile, compelled to person oregon driven from their homes, portion countless others endured persecution, imprisonment and decease successful an effort to erase full communities that had been indigenous to the peninsula for centuries.”

He said passim history, “Christian Europe” has admired and astatine times preserved and celebrated the “artistic achievements of Europe’s Islamic civilisation”, but excessively often has marginalised, excluded and persecuted Muslim communities.

Reflecting connected the exhibit, 26-year-old visitant Hana said, “Although the stories were rooted successful the past, you tin spot that the themes stay live successful today’s public.

“There was thing peculiarly ironic astir [the roof] being presented alongside the tapestry’s practice of hostility and the uncomfortable realities of migration.”

She said the irony is successful Europe’s longstanding fascination and orientalisation of Islamic creation and people, alongside expanding Islamophobia. In the past twelvemonth alone, Islamic creation has sold for record-setting amounts successful London’s auction houses, portion anti-Muslim crimes terrorise communities.

For Saleem, histories are intentionally interwoven.

“Colonisation overseas and the instauration of ethno-nationalism astatine home, these 2 components became constituent parts of the Modern European nation, which continues today,” helium said.

Elsewhere successful the exhibit, The Bell Hotel and the Britannia Hotel, some of which person been utilized to big asylum seekers, are depicted connected a overgarment of arms. Last July, hundreds of far-right protesters attempted to tempest The Bell Hotel successful Epping, Essex, astatine slightest 3 of whom were recovered blameworthy of convulsive upset this month.

Another tapestry is lively. A assemblage of market-goers bustles passim Newham’s Queen’s Market, an iconic publically owned marketplace that locals person precocious fought to support against firm development.

“I felt that these are the radical who are being precise mostly impacted by authorities and timing that we’re seeing,” Saleem told Al Jazeera. “But they besides correspond a multicultural [Britain] and a process of arriving, settling, creativity, labour and life, really. This portion shows the richness of the metropolis which is threatened.”

I was calved here: A antiaircraft connection successful the look of hostility

For Imran Haque, 25, the grounds is much than conscionable an creator and governmental commentary – it speaks to him and his family’s idiosyncratic histories.

“I Was Born Here manifests the precise real, tangible and honorable information that I, and thousands much British Muslims, were, successful fact, calved here,” helium told Al Jazeera. In the 1970s, Haque’s parent and her friends, arsenic young Bangladeshi newcomers to London, shopped for fabrics astatine the precise aforesaid marketplace that Saleem sourced his textiles from.

Underpinning Saleem’s enactment is an undermining of ethnonationalist reasoning that positions Muslim immigrants arsenic overseas and non-British.

The histories of the Alhambra and the extortion itself motion to Islam’s spot successful Europe for centuries, portion the rubric of the exhibit, I Was Born Here, satirises a communal operation that Muslim and non-white Londoners are often forced to repeat.

“It’s thing that we would person to usage to warrant our beingness here, successful England, to antagonistic racist attacks,” Saleem explained to Al Jazeera. “It’s portion [of] a parody of having to continuously assertion one’s abstraction successful the palace wherever you really belong.”

The works are the archetypal happening the oculus catches erstwhile entering the archetypal level of the Storehouse, taking up an tremendous magnitude of abstraction with its agleam colours and sheer size.

This value is not mislaid connected onlookers similar Haque, who said its prominence successful the assemblage “has allowed maine to consciousness escaped to inhabit abstraction with my past and story”.

“Muslims are not a unusual oregon overseas concept,” helium said. “The religion has been known connected these shores from the 16th century, and the pieces service arsenic a reminder that religion has nary borders.”

I Was Born Here, to Saleem, is not conscionable a governmental commentary oregon a bid of artworks – it is an artefact. “We’re successful a humanities infinitesimal astatine this constituent successful clip truthful the enactment acts arsenic a marker of that moment, arsenic well,” says Saleem, viewing the works arsenic documenting an unprecedented question of Islamophobia and anti-migrant sentiment, and a humanities revisionism that positions Europe arsenic solely Christian. “When you travel backmost and work the enactment successful 100 years’ time, it volition talk of each these things.”