For MEWNrhwng, Najia focuses on memory, loss and hope and continued her work from CARN. I Loved You But You Loved Her was the most moving message received when Najia put an open call out for unsaid messages that people wished had been spoken, and this is reflected in an embroidered extract which is golden; valuable, hand-made and meant to be seen. Movement also inspires Najia’s work; For Movement is a film and choral composition, scored using the changing shape of a tree as it swayed, reminding us in a time of high anxiety, that things always change. On Hope is a poem which is fragmented within a site-specific structure for Elysium, using vulnerable and strong materials to communicate the fragility of hope.
Najia Bagi is an artist who likes to explore the spaces within us: longing, waiting, transition, pause, breathing. She uses rituals, gatherings, repetition and movement to connect herself and others to these spaces.
Some of Najia’s projects are participatory, which means that others join her to share their stories, and these shared moments provide comfort and the creative material which often forms a performance or installation.
Often spending long periods of time working through each project, Bagi works using her own and others’ singing voices along with film, photography and the gathering of people, to create environments that enable us to explore our relationships with ourselves and one another.
Najia has led projects across the UK and internationally, including a recent multi sensory installation at Modern Art Oxford as part of the University of Oxford’s EMPRES performance evening. Najia also curates events, having recently brought together three women with Middle Eastern cultural heritage to explore how the in-between states of cultural identity can uniquely be explored through embodied movement.