Shiraz Bayjoo: To Desir, Mo Lamor / 29 May - 2 August 2025
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Opening Wednesday 28 May 6-8:30 pm 
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Pa Bliye Mwa (Don’t Forget Me), 2024. Acrylic on Panama fabric, satin print, crochet cloth, satin cord, brass botanical seeds, woven sea shells. 190 x 140 cm.

Sickness But Not in Health - Palm, 2025. Brass, with custom-made plinth. 34 x 11 x 7 cm.

Coral Island - Dead Whale, 2024. Decal and glaze and vulcan black stoneware. 50 x 40 cm.

To Desir, Mo Lamor marks Shiraz Bayjoo's (b. 1979, Port Louis, Mauritius, East Africa) second solo exhibition with Copperfield.
 
There are no native people to some of the islands in the Indian Ocean. The only natives to a place like Mauritius were the animals and plant life that came before the first humans. When they came, they brought with them enslaved and indentured workers but they also brought change. Stepping beyond a purely human centred point of view, Bayjoo draws our attention to the other victims of the plantations, with an exhibition that forms a multi-part memorial to the many lost species, some of which exist now only in drawings, while others are maintained on ‘life support’ in the green houses of botanical gardens around the world. 
 
While Bayjoo’s work is critical of human intervention — and predominantly European interference in the name of profit — it also carries with it a nod to the other side of humanity. Somewhere right now there is a person nurturing and tending to a plant that otherwise would not exist. With a little consideration humanity could have avoided the need, but nonetheless someone cares and has continued to care from the point these preserved species no longer existed in the wild. It is with this same kind of care that Bayjoo carefully immortalises each plant in installation, on canvas, in ceramic and in sculpture. 
 
During a residency in Thailand, he was invited to work with a foundry that works otherwise only to make statues for temples, and it is with this particular reverence that he has cast many of the plants included in the exhibition and following these local Thai traditions. Another material loaded with significance is French Lace. Draped over his canvases, this white crochet made from cotton is synonymous both with plantation slavery and with the lavish tables it graced in the name of civility. Metaphorically and literally, the table was set and much of the world devoured.


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Opening Wed 28 May, 6-8:30 pm 
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Runs weekly, Wed - Sat, 12 - 6pm until 2 August 2025
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Shiraz Bayjoo

​Shiraz Bayjoo is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with film, painting, photography, performance, and installation. His research-based practice focuses on addressing cultural memory, postcolonial nationhood, and the exploration of identity and histories in a manner that challenges dominant cultural narratives through the use of photographs and artefacts stored in public and personal archives. Through investigating the legacy of European colonialism, the work explores the complex histories and relationships of migration and trade, and enquires into the challenge of authoring collective identity in the post-colonial world.

Recent projects include: The Plant that Stowed Away, Tate Liverpool, UK (current); Sunlight on the Sea Floor, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC), San Juan (2025); Seeds and Souls, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2024); Colomboscope: Way of the Forest, Colombo, Sri Lanka (2024); Whitechapel gallery, Permanent public art installation (2023); Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora, Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town (2022) and Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023); Civitella Ranieri artist residency, Italy (2023); Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2022); ICF, Diaspora Pavilion 2, Venice Biennial, Italy (2022); and Ngaay - Konesans duo show with Brook Andrew, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea (2022).

He has been awarded the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, USA (2022) and has participated in residencies at Delfina Foundation (2021), Atlas Arts (2019), Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, Wales (2018); Monash University, Melbourne (2018) and Clarke House, Mumbai (2017).
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For Bayjoo's full CV please click here.