I am Sajid Wajid Shaikh
B. 1989, Navi Mumbai: India

I am Sajid Wajid Shaikh (b. 1989),
an interdisciplinary  artist based between Navi Mumbai & Aurangabad, India.
My practice centers on the belief that an artist serves as a scribe—documenting, archiving, and encoding the complexities of current time. Drawing from childhood memories of communal violence and the pervasive fear of today’s socio-political climate faced as a minority in India,
I spiral into the interstice of oppression and resistance, seeking to uncover the silenced narratives of marginalized voices struggling to assert their existence amidst subjugation and collective denial.

Through non-linear approaches—including installations, mechanicals, sculptures, films, drawings, and community projects — 
I reflect on contemporary discourse through poetic metaphors applying visual dissonance. Moral philosophy and ethics provide a framework for uncovering hidden injustices, biases, and truths that might otherwise go unnoticed. My kinetic installations, for instance, use machines as metaphors for designed dysfunctionalities of systems. My drawings & paintings evoke themes of conflict, aggression, and cyclical violence.

Art, to me, is a cryptic letter to the future, inscribed in the present — both a psychosomatic record of lived experience and a safeguard against the erasure of collective memory.  By connecting local struggles to global justice, my work urges us to resist erasure, embrace truth, and find light in creation—transforming existence into a form of passive resistance.

Most recently my works were exhibited at India Art Fair, 2024; Godrej Conscious Collective Program, 2023; Ephemeroptera: Time After Time at Tarq x Gallery XXL, 2023; OUTSIDERS at Gallery XXL, 2023; Mumbai Urban Art Festival, 2022; Future Proche at APRE Art House x The Upside Space, 2022; Masala Movement on Indernet, 2021; Tasawwur at Art + Charlie, 2020; LUX at Method Art Space, 2019; and at the Kona Art Project in 2019. Between 2019 and 2020, I am the recipient of two residencies, the Facebook Artist in Residency Program and at the Harkat Lab, supported by the Gujral Foundation.

Photo by Shoeb Mashad