Haseeb Ahmed’s art practice integrates methodologies from the hard sciences in search of a techno-poetics. His exhibition at M HKA unfolds his ongoing Wind Egg experiment. The concept of ‘wind eggs’ postulates that animals and people can be fertilised by the wind – a belief held for millennia by ancient Egyptian, Arab, Indian, European and Chinese cultures. Ahmed has worked to realise this idea with state-of-the-art wind tunnel technology at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium. In the process of personifying the wind he blends art and aeronautics, myth and technology, reflecting the human capacity to project empathetic sensibilities onto inhuman things. A project that moves from antiquity to astrobiology, the exhibition will function as a test-site for imagining the possibilities for humans to reproduce without men and with the wind.
Ahmed received his Masters from the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was previously also a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. His work has been exhibited internationally including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art, and the Museum Barengasse Zurich.
Haseeb Ahmed is based in Brussels.
Haseeb Ahmed’s exhibition is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation at the Zurich University of the Arts, Saint Lucas Antwerp College of Art and Design, and the University of Antwerp.