Artwork
Below is a taster of my artwork.
COVID CREATES
Drawing on creative resources in the time of Covid19. Images from Creative Journal, a pre-requisite for my integrative arts psychotherapy training (2019-2020).
Layered Mix
Greeting card for Celebrations in the City, Rich Mix, London.
Commissioned by Rich Mix to create a greeting card that’s inspired by the city from the Rich Mix point of view. I was selected as one of ten artists who somehow represent the diversity of this arts and performance venue.
I made three images and Rich Mix selected. I have performed at this delightful venue years ago, and have been to many different events and performances there too. I focused on the perspective of walking to the venue from Bethnal Green tube, showing a tree across the road and a tall building in the background. I had a bright yellow later underneath, which to me represents the rich cultural and historical layers of this part of East London. With the dots and splashes of today’s hustle and bustle thrown on top.
Been truly a pleasure to be part of this initiative.
These cards support The not-for-profit work of Rich Mix, and can be purchased here.
Medium: acrylic inks on canvas (November 2017).
The Banned Monologues
Invitation cards for a closed sharing of my one-woman performance, The Banned Monologues, a work-in-progress.
Acrylic inks on canvas (November 2017).
Take Care of Your Self
Group exhibition curated by Sundus Abdul Hadi at 3845 Boulevard St-Laurent, Montreal, Canada (July 2017)
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“Take Care of Your Self” was a multidisciplinary group exhibition and series of events bringing together artwork, intervention, performance, and conversations by 28 artists of diverse communities dealing with the intersections of struggle and self-care. This exhibit is a deliberate act in the politicization of self-care in order to better resist, or persist, in the struggles for rights, freedoms and wellbeing. Illustrated by the works in this exhibit, the heavy subjects of trauma, loss and displacement can transform into opportunities for healing and empowerment, foregrounding the concept of self-care at the forefront of the discourse on struggle.
Binary
Illustration for Binary blogpost, looking at polarities of colour and texture, as a metaphor for states of being.
Medium: soluble crayons and acrylic ink on watercolour paper (April 2016).
Body Count Series
Series of drawings made during my time as an Outreach Worker with Iraq Body Count, working on Iraq Digital Memorial.
After a particularly difficult week, meeting people who have lost close family members and friends in Iraq, I found myself sleepless and frantically making these in the early hours. Nameless and faceless figures, representatives of the many who have fallen, and continue to fall to violence. I wanted the obscure, incomplete abstractness of the figures, which to me reflected the open-ended experiences of those who had lost loved ones. These losses were sudden, unexpected, often gruesome, which added to the usual grieving process following any death.
Medium: tea, coffee granules, cigarette ash and black ink (November 2015).
Dreamscape
Painting to capture essence of a dreamscape with performers at a circus, and a tree.
Acrylics inks on canvas, seen with visible masking fluid for work-in-progress shots (September 2014).
Wales Residency
I began working on a solo performance piece in Wales, with the Authentic Artists Network, and whilst others worked on their pieces, the rest of us wrote and drew with a mix of our own stuff or/ and what we were witnessing from other people’s works. Some shared dance choreography, others worked on their voices, some had more developed pieces that required all of us to volunteer in. I had just started my own performance modules working with leftover stuff from my community work, centring around issues of identity and belonging, migration and integration, woman-ness and female sensuality in Middle Eastern cultures as well as spirituality and popular culture. Below, I set myself the challenge of working with limited colours- and very different choices to my usual monochromes- to see what comes out, and the below are a few from my sketchbook.
Acrylic inks on cartridge paper (July 2013).
Sufi Retreat
Works created whilst on a Sufi spiritual retreat in New Mexico, U.S.A.
Two of these were exhibited at a group collection, organised by an interfaith organisation, Three Faiths Forum, as part of their Urban Dialogues visual art exhibition in 2012, at the Red Gallery in East London. The original blurb I wrote for the exhibit is below, which clearly shows my (high) state of mind at the time!
‘Come to Me’ (first on left below) delves into the juxtaposition of spirituality and female sensuality. Conservative Muslim communities assign women greater responsibility towards guarding themselves from the male gaze, whilst her own sensual desires are rarely addressed. The text is from a classical Arabic song, by the Egyptian singer, Fareed al-Atresh: ‘In the stillness of the night, I call for you, my love, come to me when I am all alone’.
What applies to continents, countries, ethnic and religious groups also applies to the conflict and peace within the self. In the process of finding a core of faith, an inner thread, to reconcile personal existential anxieties, can we then apply this experience towards a wider societal context? And by working on our own spiritual peace, do we not, via cosmic empathy, effect the world we live in?
Sufi spiritual practice focuses on ‘Al-Baatin’ refers to the inner, mystical or hidden dimension of the message of God, as conveyed in the Qur’an, as opposed to the literal/ dhaahir meaning of what is written. The hidden can only be relieved to those in a pure, meditative state, as opposed to those who prioritise societal conventions and didactic rules and ways of being-in-the-world.
Acrylic inks and pen on canvas (November 2012).
Studio and Works-in-progress
London home studio space used between 2011-2015, with various ideas and techniques mid-exploration.
This space was refurbished to become my toddler’s bedroom!
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