Madyha Leghari (b. 1991) is a visual artist, writer and educator based in Lahore. She pursued a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore (2013) and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2018) on a Fulbright Scholarship. Her practice often revolves around 'silences created by the failures of language'. Madyha has been the recipient of the Vasl Writing Mentorship; Mansion Artist Residency; Delta Research Placement at the Flat Time House; Siena Art Institute Artist Residency and the Murree Museum residency. Madyha has shown her works internationally in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, India, Pakistan, Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and Guatemala and at platforms such as the Pera Museum, University of Colorado Boulder, Bennington College, Sea Foundation, The Institute for Experimental Arts, Nottingham Arts Mela, 17th Athens Digital Arts Festival, and Antimatter. Madyha has written on art for a number of publications including ArtNow Pakistan and the Dawn Newspaper. She has teaching experience at the National College of Arts, Lahore, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston and the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.
Films shown in Divvy Film Festival 2021
Madyha Leghari, Choose Your Own Father, 2020
Choose Your Own Father is an essay film that derives from extensive archival research into John Latham’s early history in Zambia, describing personal histories of Latham’s father and interweaving these with those of the filmmaker's own father
Choose Your Own Father is an essay film that derives from extensive archival research into John Latham’s early history in Zambia, describing personal histories of Latham’s father and interweaving these with those of the filmmaker's own father
Madyha Leghari, Hairless, 2019
A fictional city grapples with an inexplicable, complete loss of hair. Posited both as an extension and the boundary of a body, hair occupies a liminal position between the animate and inanimate “dead” matter. Since the influence of evolutionary thought in the nineteenth century, comparative hairlessness in humans has been the subject of extensive cultural debate and resultant shift in its value. “Excessive” human hair is variously associated with sexual inversion, the primitive, the criminal, the pathological, the diseased, the beast or even the lunatic. The film satirises these accounts by removing the supposed evolutionary obstacle posed by hair. However, the resultant world is that of tactile longing, sensory deprivation, and eco-anxiety.
A fictional city grapples with an inexplicable, complete loss of hair. Posited both as an extension and the boundary of a body, hair occupies a liminal position between the animate and inanimate “dead” matter. Since the influence of evolutionary thought in the nineteenth century, comparative hairlessness in humans has been the subject of extensive cultural debate and resultant shift in its value. “Excessive” human hair is variously associated with sexual inversion, the primitive, the criminal, the pathological, the diseased, the beast or even the lunatic. The film satirises these accounts by removing the supposed evolutionary obstacle posed by hair. However, the resultant world is that of tactile longing, sensory deprivation, and eco-anxiety.
