Zainub Verjee

As a writer and critic she has been very prolific.[3][22][23][24][25] She was the guest editor of a special double issue of the Capilano Review,[26] the first to be entirely devoted to women, featuring thirty-seven British Columbia women writers and visual artists, all working within the theme of struggle, local and global.[27][28]

In the 1990s, she worked for a decade as the Executive Director of the Western Front Society[29] in Vancouver.[30][8][31][32][33] She has been active as an arts administrator in the field of cultural policy and cultural diplomacy for over 30 years.[34][9][35][2][36] Her decades of work in the sector has led to appointments on boards, steering committees and invitations to speak on the national and international fora.[37][38] In addition to holding positions at Women in Focus, Citizen’s Forum on Canada’s Future -The Spicer Commission, Canada Council for the Arts, Department of Canadian Heritage etc.,she was engaged by Gordon Campbell, Canadian diplomat and the 35th Mayor of Vancouver on his landmark Vancouver Arts Initiative, and among many appointments to Boards, she is proud of her work at the B.C. Arts Board that led to the formation of the B.C. Arts Council.[39][40][41] In 2017 she was appointed as the Director of the International Art Gallery at the Jubilee International Arts Festival in Lisbon.[42] Given her expertise in cultural policy and cultural diplomacy, she was at the forefront of the cultural policy work in the 1980s-2000s in Canada and internationally working on issues of Artist Labour, Racial Equity, and Culture Trade.[43][44][45] She is at forefront in writing about how COVID-19 exposed hypocrisy about the artists and their labour. She also co-authored a letter, on behalf of 75000 artists, to the Prime Minister of Canada on issue of Basic Income.[46] She is spearheading a movement on Basic Income for the artists which has became an international issue[47][48] and she was invited to speak at the Creative Directions Festival of Monash University, Australia[49] and giving keynote on issues of labour and political economy of arts.[50]

Appointed in 2015, Zainub is currently the Executive Director of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries.[40][51]

Born in Nairobi in 1956, Zainub is a fourth generation Kenyan.[52][53] She moved to Canada in the 1970s to study economics at Simon Fraser University.[12] Verjee family is known for its philanthropy around the world.

"Zainub’s career in curatorship, policy and administration has been consistent and contiguous with what might be termed a critical transversal aesthetic. Zainub’s movement, from art to institutional work, as the pursuit of a more effective transversal praxis."[54]

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), M.S.U. Baroda, India,Embassy Cultural House,London, Art Gallery of Alberta and resides in private and public collections (Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada).[55][56]