In 1962, Anwar Shemza created the painting ‘One to Nine and One to Seven’, inscribed with the quote above in Urdu. In shemza.digital Aphra Shemza & Stuart Batchelor use this as a starting point to continue Shemza’s aesthetic exploration and highlight the importance of migrant artists in British Art History to decolonise the artworld. By creating shemza.digital, a new online and interactive artwork, they ask the public to join them on this journey by creating their own digital paintings in the style of Anwar Jalal Shemza, creating a space for contemplation and artistic activity that is free and accessible to all.

Participant contributions are stored in an online archive with a view to create physical collaborative artworks in the future. The project launched on 18th November 2020 at the Shifting Ground online event curated by Aphra Shemza for National Gallery X. shemza.digital is supported by Arts Council England.

Since the launch the shemza.digital in-browser interactive artwork has been exhibited at the Watermans Digital Weekender and the Art in Flux: Reclaimed virtual exhibition. Alongside this, two new digital and collaborative artworks were created following a public competition held in February 2021 - shemza.digital# 1, a 3D animation and shemza.digital #2, a film based work. These artworks were created from the competition winners’ digital paintings and were first exhibited as part of the Art in Flux: Reclaimed virtual exhibition launched at the National Gallery X in March 2021. Since the launch the exhibition has been exhibited as part of the Kensington and Chelsea Art Week in June and Ars Electronica Festival in September 2021. This was a brilliant opportunity for the public to have their work exhibited alongside some of the most cutting edge media artists of today.

In early 2021 the UK went into a national lockdown with children returning to homeschooling. In response to this we created some simple online teaching resources for teachers to use whilst the children were isolating. These were used successfully with eight national and international schools. In March 2021 we held the first online Digital Painting Workshop and have subsequently held workshops with clients including the V&A Museum, Norden Farm Arts Centre, National Centre for Computer Animation and the Festival of Curiosity. More information about the workshops we have on offer can be found here.

In July 2021, as part of the Electronic Visual Arts Conference, Aphra Shemza and Stuart Batchelor published an academic paper about the project entitled “shemza.digital: participatory art as a catalyst for social change”, which can be accessed here. Later that month they were invited to be featured at The Other Art Fair virtual edition where they exhibited the interactive painting application, 3D animation, film and works by Anwar Jalal Shemza. More details can be found here.

Also in July the project was awarded a second Arts Council Project Grant for the second stage of the project. In this next stage Aphra Shemza designed a new spatial digital painting software and ran 6 co-creation workshops with diverse communities across the country. Partners for the workshops were: DINA - Sheffield, The Margate School - Margate, Art in Flux - London, The Woodcraft Folk - Eastbourne, The Curve - Grenfell community London, shemza.digital - National. It had always been the aim of the project that the participants' digital paintings would be turned into an immersive light installation. During the workshops participants came up with ideas for what the final installation would look like using the new spatial software created by the artist.

After the workshops Aphra went on to design the final installation and created the shemza.digital online exhibition, which ran from 30th September - 15th October 2021. The exhibition featured real time interactive animations, light sculptures and works by Anwar Jalal Shemza in a custom made exhibition environment. View the exhibition archive here. 

Aphra also created a new physical work, shemza.digital #3, 2021 - a scaled down version of the online exhibition, which is available for exhibiting moving forwards. This artwork features an interactive animation and can be exhibited on a projector or screen depending on the space available. More information here. The work was exhibited at the Deeep AI Art Fair between 13th-17th October 2021.

In the third stage of the project Shemza created the Shemza Digital: Across Generations exhibition and public program for Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Shemza turned the digital artworks that her and the public created together into new physcial, digital and interactive artworks for more members of the public to enjoy. Find out more about the exhibition above.