‘I Was Born Here’: London exhibition weaves Muslim life, Europe’s Islamic past and contemporary Islamophobia

Altab Ali portrait: Another tapestry is a panelled portrait of Altab Ali, a 24-year-old Bangladeshi textile worker who was murdered in 1978 in a racially motivated attack. The work honours his memory and anchors the show in Britain's own history of racial violence.

Voyage and history: A third tapestry includes imagery of Christopher Columbus's Santa Maria and references to 1492, the start of Spanish colonisation and the onset of the Spanish Inquisition's campaign against Jewish and Muslim communities in the peninsula. Saleem intentionally interweaves colonisation abroad with the development of ethno-nationalism at home.

Saleem was invited to create the work in 2024 for the V&A East Storehouse with the instruction that the commission respond to local community and culture and to the Torrijos ceiling. He sat on pillows beneath the roof and invited visitors to view and discuss the works.

Historian Tharik Hussain is cited in the exhibition text to outline the larger historical frame: he describes how the period often celebrated as Spain's Golden Age also led to mass exile, forced conversion and persecution of European Muslims and Jews. The exhibition intentionally places artistic admiration for Islamic civilisation alongside accounts of marginalisation.

Saleem situates the tapestries against a political moment he describes as marked by rising xenophobia. The exhibition text mentions recent election wins by Reform UK and racist riots in Belfast as part of that climate. Saleem says he saw increasing racial politics while making the work and that those forces informed its composition.

Visitors linked the historical material to contemporary realities. One 26-year-old visitor, Hana, noted that although stories in the tapestries are rooted in the past, the themes "remain alive" today and flagged an irony: Europe's fascination with and market for Islamic art continues even as anti-Muslim violence and exclusion escalate.

The exhibition deliberately layers decorative Islamic motifs with scenes of immigration enforcement, racial violence and colonial history. That juxtaposition asks visitors to consider how admiration for elements of Islamic civilisation has coexisted with policies and popular movements that exclude, intimidate or persecute Muslim communities.