One of the Canadian Film and Video pioneers, Zainub Verjee speaks on her journey as an artist and In Visible Colours as part of a collection of interviews with seven astounding women who have an extensive history of working in film and video.
The series is called SuperWomen: Conversations with the Real Action Figures
Across genres, in front and behind the camera, these global voices firmly established an independent filmmaking foundation whose spirit has continued to inspire the next generations.
“I am honoured to be included and my work acknowledged along with my fellow filmmakers, says Zainub Verjee”
Zainub speaks about her journey and introduction to the medium of video in the early 1980s. She later elaborates on In Visible Colours, widely regarded as a “foundation film event in Canadian history”. She says, “In Visible Colours emerged amid contestations on nation-building and the making of the global neoliberal order, as much as the socio-political upheaval of the late 1970s and 1980s that foregrounded race and gender and the politics of cultural difference. As much as the transnational feminist discourse and the marginalization of women of colour therein, In Visible Colours was primarily about the contested history of the modernist aesthetic and modernism in the visual arts, and the making of the contemporary condition––as a historical marker––for the decolonized world. The operative question was: Who was defining this marker?”
Both Zainub Verjee (2020) and Midi Onodera (2018) are laureates of the Governor-General Awards in Visual and Media Arts.