Javid Jah is an interdisciplinary artist and designer interested in the traditional origins of sacred geometry. His practice explores a variety of interventions, from temporary architectures to sculptural installations, designing and fabricating work that is site-specific, spatial and symbolically aligned to cosmic archetypes. He is inspired by the symbolism of cosmology – how the human can be understood as a microcosm of the Universe.

As a graffiti art muralist, he has painted and delivered workshops across the world, from Medellin, Colombia to Cape Town, South Africa and Mumbai, India. Over the last decade, he has produced notable public artworks, locally and internationally, including a series of 9 sculptures for the Formula 1 race track along the Red Sea in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In 2018, his work was featured in the reflective pools of Aga Khan Museum Park (Toronto, Canada) in which he explored the comparative sacred geometries of Vedism and Islam, titled “Majma al-bahrain (The Mingling of the Seas)”. His most recent local work integrates principles of indigenous traditional knowledge, such as the interactive fire pit sculptures designed for Toronto’s COVID Memorial collective healing project known as “The Burn”. In 2024, Javid will be installing one of the first permanent Islamic architectural public art works in Canada – an archway at the entrance of a new park in Mississauga celebrating the traditional crystalline geometry of the muqarnas.

With a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from the University of British Columbia (2010) and a Masters in Architecture from the University of Toronto (2014), he possesses a unique foundation that combines grassroots activism, traditional knowledge and construction science. Through the work of his design-build studio, Javid hopes to inspire conversations about how traditional teachings can empower disenfranchised communities. His work champions Quadrivium – the four traditional sacred sciences – arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy – through experimentation with new digital fabrication technologies. A great example of this cross-disciplinary exploration is “XSITE”, an evolving collaborative modular public art installation, which uses the infrastructure of a rotating shipping container to exhibit audio-visual holographics as the structure follows the visible planets. The project provides a research database for diverse cosmologies, prioritizing stories from Black, Indigenous and People of Color, cultivating an awareness of our symbolic relationship to the cosmos as a response to the global climate crisis.