Jamelie Hassan

Jamelie Hassan
Born	London, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Education	University of Western Ontario Al-Mustansiriya University

Jamelie Hassan is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, lecturer, writer and independent curator. She was born in London, Ontario, in 1948.

Born in London, Ontario, to a Lebanese immigrant family, Hassan was one of eleven children. She grew up in an Arabic speaking household. A visit to Lebanon in 1967 confirmed her Lebanese cultural background. Her maternal grandfather and her father travelled from mountain villages in Lebanon to North America in the early 1900s, fleeing Turkish military conscription and World War I. After completing her high school studies, Hassan travelled to Rome (1967) and Beirut (1968), where she studied art. Upon her return to London in 1969, she continued her studies and while working in the library at the University of Western Ontario, she established her first studio and became active in the cultural community of the city. In 1978, she travelled to Baghdad, Iraq, and studied Arabic at Al-Mustansiriya University. Extensive travel continues to enrich her work, which often reflects this artist's respect for popular, traditional and indigenous art forms.

Hassan studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Rome (1967), Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Beirut, Lebanon (1968), the University of Windsor, Ontario (1969) and University of Mustansyria, Baghdad (1978-79).

In 1976–1977, she was politicized by encountering postcolonial cultures in Central and South America. Beginning in 1972, she pursued her art full-time. In 1976 she started exhibiting life size reconstructions of objects in ceramics or fiberglass called 'actualizations'.

Her art uses photography, text and existing cultural artifacts to make cross-cultural references, such as: cultural displacement, Argentinian dictatorship (Los Desaparecidos, 1981), or the narratives of intersecting cultures (Boutros Al Armenian / Mediterranean Modern, 1997). In 1983 Hassan co-founded the London artist cooperative, Embassy Cultural House, serving on its board from 1985 to 1990.

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