From the Organizer:
Zahra Almajidi’s practice engages with archival imagery, secondhand accounts, and ancient craft traditions to establish a narrative that anchors her existence in a present she is struggling to endure in. This is not merely an exercise in historical reconstruction, but a refusal of erasure—an insistence on continuity amidst imposed destruction.
Leveraging her extensive training as a visual artist, metalsmith, and fabricator, Almajidi meticulously works to digitally recreate craft objects that are no longer made due to the displacement of their makers. Referencing her built digital archive of imagery and objects allows her to get a sense of color, scale, and form, whilst using CAD/CAM processes to ensure the objects are functional and visually referential, allowing for iterative design and prototyping.
Almajidi examines how one can craft a connection to their culture through their making, whilst simultaneously examining the effects of assimilation and erasure of people and cultures in displacement.
Biography
Zahra Almajidi is a visual artist and metalsmith raised and based in Detroit, MI. Utilizing both traditional metalsmithing techniques and CAD/CAM processes, her work explores the ways in which objects and adornment allow displaced people to continue to uphold and practice their craft traditions while living in the diaspora.
She has worked at several art fabrication spaces in Metro Detroit including Wayne State University where she received her BFA in Metalsmithing, Lawrence Technological University where she briefly served as shop co-manager, and Cranbrook Academy of Art where she received her MFA in Metalsmithing and was awarded the Cranbrook Art Director’s fellowship and the Director’s Award.
She has taken part in the 2021 Incubator Residency program at Talking Dolls Detroit, the Artist + Residents Program at the Arab American National Museum in 2021, and the Winter Residency program at Penland School of Craft in 2024. She’s also dedicated to maintaining an active studio practice, and regularly exhibits work.
She is currently the Central Materials Lab Coordinator at Cranbrook Academy of Art as well as an adjunct instructor at Wayne State University.
Zahra Almajidi is a recipient of The Sculpture Center’s Revealed Emerging Artist Series.
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