Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Zainub Verjee was educated in England and immigrated to Canada in the early 1970s. She has seamlessly played multiple roles and has shaped culture policy at all levels of government and was instrumental in building cultural institutions and organizations in Canada and internationally. Fuelled by passion, vision and a staunch conviction that art is a public good, Zainub is regularly invited to speak nationally and internationally and has been published in numerous academic, cultural and critical fora.
Zainub co-founded the critically acclaimed In Visible Colours: An International Film/Video Festival & Symposium for Third World Women and Women of Colour. Among many appointments to boards, she is proud of her work at the B.C. Arts Board, which led to the formation of the British Columbia Arts Council. She is the executive director of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, in Toronto, and lives in Mississauga, Ontario.
Embedded in a Fluxus ethos, apart from her practice as a multidisciplinary artist, she is a programmer/curator, critic, writer, and activist. Her artworks have been shown at the Venice Biennale, Museum of Modern Art, NY, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland US, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie, France, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, México, D. F. (Mexico City, Mexico), India, and resides in private and public collections (Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada).
