Women in the City Billboards.

As part of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s exhibition, Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, and Southbank Centre, Lubaina Himid CBE selected three Birmingham-based artists to respond to the show and create new artwork for billboards in and around Birmingham. Haseebah Ali was one of the artists selected to create a billboard.

The art piece that Haseebah created from the commission is called ‘The Pink Route’ and was shown on a billboard on Bradford St and Stratford Rd in Birmingham.

The pink route is an original four colour reduction lino print. It is in the style of an Islamic repeat pattern and represents women roaming in the city. The lino print hints at the restriction’s women face at night in the city and how they may have to take the longer yet ‘safer’ route to get home. The complex linework of the pattern inspired by Islamic architecture speaks to the complexity of the issue and the different winding routes women may have to take at night to get to their home safely. The print directly links into the rise of gender violence and mortality rate of young women of colour. The colours of the print are different hues of pink to purple to show the transformation from day to night. And although pink has been used stereotypically in the past for women, the shade here is powerful and one of a kind.

Original Print.

Below is the original print of the four colour Lino that hasn’t been repeated digitally. Haseebah created this print in between her own studio and Birmingham PrintMakers. The geometric pattern can be seen on architecture in the Great Mosque of Cordoba in Spain.

You can purchase this image as a digital print here or if you prefer an original please email me.