As one of the first artists commissioned for New Work, V&A East’s six-month rotating commission programme, Shahed Saleem began his research by looking upwards: to the monumental Torrijos Ceiling installed above Gallery 3 at V&A East Storehouse.
The ceiling led him to the history of late fifteenth-century Spain, when religious and cultural difference was violently suppressed through forced conversion, expulsion and the creation of a Catholic state. By drawing connections across time and geography, Saleem connected this history with the politics of borders, nationalism and anti-immigration language in Britain today.
Installed beneath the ceiling, I Was Born Here brings these histories into the present. Across three large textile works, Saleem looks at state power, migration, racism and the everyday creativity of East London’s migrant communities and asks how the bordering processes seen on streets today relate to earlier forms of violent state action, including those that shaped the creation of the modern Spanish nation at the end of the fifteenth century.
Reading the three textiles
Home Office, Machine stitched fabric, applique
The central textile work, Home Office, refers to the UK Government’s “hostile environment” policy, introduced by the then-Home Secretary Theresa May in 2012. One part of this policy involved vans being driven through parts of East London with a billboard telling people in the UK illegally to “go home or face arrest” which created an atmosphere of threat on the street.
Saleem reproduced this billboard text in fabric and placed it over detailed geometric patterns and borders inspired by the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. The harsh language of immigration control sits against decorative patterns connected to medieval Islamic Spain, linking present-day border politics in Britain with older histories of religious and cultural exclusion.
For God and Gold, Machine stitched fabric, applique
The second work, For God and Gold, is made up of six framed narrative illustrations. The format recalls the sequential style of narrative paintings found in churches. The top central image shows Columbus’s ship, the Santa Maria, on its first voyage to the Americas. This refers to the beginning of Spanish colonisation in the Americas.
The top left image is based on the Castilian coat of arms. Saleem adapted it with the words “Get Off My Land”, a phrase he saw written on the England St Goerge’s Cross flag by a protestor opposing immigration to the UK. On the shield, he included the Bell Hotel in Epping and the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf, both sites of protests against asylum seekers in summer 2025.
The top right image shows the statue of Robert Milligan, an eighteenth-century slave trader and plantation owner. His statue stood in London’s docks from 1813. During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, it was covered and marked with a Black Lives Matter sign before being removed. It is now stored by the London Museum.
The bottom left image is a portrait of Altab Ali, a Bangladeshi textile worker murdered in a racist attack in Whitechapel in 1978. His death became a turning point for the local Bangladeshi community, who had suffered ongoing racist violence, and organised protests and youth movements in response.
The bottom centre image reads: “For God and Gold since 1492”. The phrase refers to Spain’s colonial expansion after 1492, which was driven by both the spread of Christianity and the search for wealth, especially gold. In Saleem’s work, the panel draws a historical connection between this period and the ways power, violence and colonisation continue to be felt in the present.
The final image on the bottom right refers to Limpieza de Sangre, meaning “Purity of Blood”. This was a Spanish policy that judged people according to whether they had Christian ancestry and discriminated against those who did not. Saleem connects this history to the present through the UK Government symbol for facial recognition. The image suggests that older ideas of racial and religious purity still echo in contemporary systems of surveillance, border control and exclusion.
Queens Market, Machine stitched fabric, applique
Queens Market is rooted directly in East London. Saleem photographed people he encountered in Queens Market in Newham, where he bought fabrics and trimmings for the commission. He then made drawings from those photographs, which became the basis for the textile work.
Unlike the other pieces, which draw on news images and historical references, Queens Market comes from Saleem’s own experience of the market. The work shows Queens Market as a place of migration, labour, exchange and creativity. It also shows what is at risk in a climate shaped by nationalism and exclusion. For Saleem, this scene was essential because it brings the work back to the people, materials and everyday life of East London.
Starting with drawing
Drawing has always been central to his practice. For this commission, his sketchbook remained the place where ideas were tested and developed. He researched fifteenth-century Spain through books, podcasts and articles, and visited Spain several times to see historic sites from the period.
He also studied the visual culture of medieval Spain. Across the three textiles, many of the repeated patterns come from tilework in the Alhambra Palace in Granada. Some also come from Spanish tiles in the V&A collection. Saleem copied, adapted and recombined these patterns across the works.
Then, moving from drawing to textile changed the scale and structure of the images. What began as sketchbook-sized drawings had to be translated into large fabric works. This shift gave Saleem more freedom to enlarge and reshape the images.
Textile as a material language
Historically, tapestries were often used in rooms as both decoration and structure, helping to create enclosed, inhabited spaces. For Saleem, working with textile offered a way to respond to the Torrijos Ceiling not only as an image or architectural feature, but as part of a room that visitors could enter, sit within and spend time looking at.
Fabric also created a direct connection to East London. Saleem bought materials, borders and trimmings from Newham, linking the work to the everyday textures of the area and to the fabrics local people use to make clothes. They are built through layers of cloth, thread, pattern, borders and appliqué. The works are therefore not simply images transferred into fabric but allowed Saleem to bring together drawing, decoration, architecture and local material culture.
Testing, making, and collaboration
As textile was a new medium for Saleem, the process involved research and testing. He met textile makers, discussed ideas, and looked at different examples of textile art. He also made test pieces to understand what kind of visual language could emerge from the materials.
The process was partly planned and partly improvised. Saleem had an overall structure for each work but allowed the pieces to change as they were made. Decisions about colour, pattern, stitching and material developed through the making process itself.
Saleem fabricated the works himself supported by skilled assistants. He worked closely with Holly Shih, who assisted the making of all three works. Ruoyu Shen worked on a number of the borders, while Svitlana Kryvoruchko helped with general making and assembling and fixing the pieces together. All three were from London College of Fashion in the Olympic Park and brought specialist sewing knowledge to the project.
Rabia Khalid, an architecture student from Central Saint Martins, also worked with Saleem at the beginning of the process, helping with the first Home Office piece.
Together, these forms of support helped Saleem translate his research, drawing and architectural thinking into large-scale textile works. Through this process, I Was Born Here became a material work shaped through drawing, fabric, pattern and collaborative production, connecting histories of migration, exclusion and belonging with the textures and labour of East London.
East London has so many different stories.. @geometry arrow