• Gouled Ahmed Hope In The Night Season (2023)

    Gouled Ahmed, Hope In The Night Season (2023). Self-portrait photography, 70 cm x 80 cm photo inkjet printed on Nautilus Classic offset recycled paper.

  • Gouled Ahmed Except This Time Nothing Returns From The Ashes Structure (20232024)

    Gouled Ahmed, Except This Time Nothing Returns From The Ashes Structure (2023/2024). Installation, 444cm x 588cm. Installation shots from my solo exhibition commissioned by Spike Island Gallery Bristol, UK 2023, curated by Carmen Julia. Also shown at The Africa Center, NYC, curated by Evelyn Owen, 2024.

  • Gouled Ahmed Shadow Songs (2022)

    Gouled Ahmed, Shadow Songs (2022). Self-portrait photography, 60cm x 80cm C-Print.

  • Gouled Ahmed This Year I Vow To Make A Monument Of My Body (2024) 236cm x 396cm textile sculpture

    Gouled Ahmed, This Year I Vow To Make A Monument of This Body (2024). Mixed-media textile sculpture, 236cm x 396cm. Exhibition view from Encounters, Black Rock Senegal group show at Centre Culturel Blaise Senghor, Dakar, Senegal, for the OFF of the 15th Dak’art Biennale 2024, curated by Dr Jareh Das. Materials used: East African Macawis (sarong) in cotton, and spun silk. Embroidered canvas print self portraits & archival family photos, collected family memorabilia (maternal and paternal grandmother's buttons, doilies, broaches), embroidered found objects (rice bags).

  • Gouled Ahmed When The Skylarks Sing Our Lungs Will Find Home Again (2023) Self-portrait photography installation

    Gouled Ahmed, When The Skylarks Sing Our Lungs Will Find Home Again (2023). Self-portrait photography installation. Size: Variable Exhibition view from Utopias, Lahti Biennale, Lahti Finland 2023 curated by Henri Airo.

Gouled Ahmed (Djibouti) is a visual artist, costume designer and filmmaker. Their practice examines modern shrouding mechanisms – the veil, ceremonial mask-making, and the crafting of anti-recognition garments – as technologies of resistance; using them as tools to revolt against state-designed surveillance mechanisms and as means to discuss the themes of invisibility, hypervisibility, and disappearing.

During their residency, they seek to conduct research in relation to their long-term project, Praise To The Godlands. Gouled will engage with several archives held at the British Library, including the sonic archives in the John Low Collection. They will primarily look at recordings surrounding Somali women’s weaving songs (Heesaha Tolidda), devotional songs, laments for the dead & departed, as well as songs for the safe crossing of seafarers.

Gouled is a recipient of several awards, such as the African Cultural Fund’s inaugural grant (2019), the Prince Claus Fund’s inaugural Seed Award (2021), and the Sharjah Art Foundation’s Production Programme Grant (2022). Their self-portrait photography work features in the four-year touring exhibition, Africa Fashion, commissioned by the V&A Museum, London (2022). They have participated in Biennials, including DAK’Art Biennale, Senegal (2024).

Their collaborative film with Bristol-based Somali poet and filmmaker Asmaa Jama, The Season of Burning Things (2021), was screened at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in collaboration with the Goethe Institut and Theater Neumarkt’s ‘100 Ways to Say We program.’

Their latest collaborative film, Except this Time Nothing Returns From the Ashes, has had solo presentations at Spike Island Gallery, Bristol, in 2023, and at The Africa Center in Harlem, New York in 2024. It was most recently  screened at the ICA, London, in 2025 via the Bloomberg New Contemporaries program.

Gouled Ahmed was born in Djibouti and is currently based in Ethiopia.

With support from:

Delfina Foundation’s Network of Africa Patrons  

Artist’s website

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Please note all artist-in-residence biographies are accurate at the time of their residency. For up-to-date bios please visit the artist’s website.