How do we move through the world, and what invisible forces, structures, and systems shape our movement? How might we imagine alternate ways of existing in public spaces that resist patterns and paths often predetermined for us?
These are the questions I explore in my practice.
Through participatory research and mapping, I examine our relationships with overlooked markers that influence our movement: hostile architecture, postal codes, passports and visas, maps, nation state borders and identities.
I moved to the United States from India, during dramatic socio-political shifts towards fascism in both these countries while the world increasingly oriented towards extraction and accumulation. higher class gaps and destruction of the planet. My creative work responds to these shifts, using a personal perspective to comment on the broader political context. My work takes many different socially engaged forms including but not limited to improvisation, installations, singing circles, walking together, making a naproom in the mall, writing a letter to a past address and making alternate passports. My work intersects at both personal and political junctures; it is, at large, an attempt to represent lived experience of systemic oppression, offer a means of collective healing and reclaim space for personal and collective liberation.
Simeen Anjum (she/her) is an artist and educator interested in imagining alternative modes of existence and belonging in public spaces. Her work attempts to initiate conversations that can facilitate new possibilities of being, becoming and belonging in a time of repression. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Applied Art from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.
Simeen has exhibited and taught workshops internationally, including New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle, Eindhoven, New Delhi, and Kochi. Places and people are central to her practice, and she has been traveling with her ongoing project, Public Agency of Travel Planning for the Overwhelmed, which has been exhibited in multiple venues and continues to develop. The project highlights the experiences of navigating the power imbalances embedded in the U.S. immigration system, as well as the bureaucratic labyrinths and uncertainties faced by non-citizens, especially people of color. It invites reflection and dialogue on borders, nation-states, and the right to mobility
Her work has been featured in notable exhibitions such as Public Domain (2025), Social Practice Assembly in Portland, OR (2024), and the Kochi Biennale (2020, 2022). She received the Arctivists Grant from the Human Rights Defenders Hub in 2020. Simeen is currently based in Portland, Oregon, where she works as a K–12 Learning Guide at the Portland Art Museum.
(Photo by Nina Vichayapai)
News & Features
‘Walls Are the Publishers of the Poor’: How Women Sketch the Language of Resistance
The Revolution Will Be Painted: Protest Art in New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University
How the Students’ Biennale in Kochi is helping art students across India
The Colourful Dissent: When Shaheen Bagh, Jamia become a canvas for protest
Education ant (Anti)Institutions – Second Assembly
Interactive Art Exhibit: Public Agency of Travel Planning for the Overwhelmed
Contact Me:
simeenanjum.com 