London exhibition links Muslim histories to contemporary migration politics

Shahed Saleem’s exhibition I Was Born Here uses three large tapestries to connect British Muslim life with Europe’s Islamic past, migration and contemporary Islamophobia.

Commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2024 for its Stratford location, the exhibition is displayed beneath an Islamic-inspired wooden ceiling from Torrijos in central Spain. Its works depict subjects including London’s Queen’s Market, asylum-seeker hotels and signs associated with the Home Office’s 2013 “Hostile Environment” policy.

One tapestry reproduces slogans such as “In the UK Illegally?” and “GO HOME OR FACE ARREST” against patterns rooted in medieval Islamic Spain. Another portrays Altab Ali, a 24-year-old Bangladeshi textile worker murdered in a racially motivated attack in London in 1978.

The exhibition also references the Spanish Inquisition, the persecution and expulsion of Muslim and Jewish communities, and Spain’s colonisation of the Americas. Historian Tharik Hussain said European Islamic civilisation had often been admired and preserved while Muslim communities were marginalised and persecuted.

Saleem said the works responded to rising anti-migrant and anti-Muslim sentiment, describing the exhibition as a record of its historical moment. It also depicts Queen’s Market in Newham, which is publicly owned and facing pressure from corporate development.

Visitors said the exhibition connected historical narratives with present-day experiences of belonging, racism and Islamophobia. Saleem said its title reflects the need for Muslim and non-white Londoners to repeatedly assert that they were born in Britain.