Her figurative artworks create a pluralistic image-world that expresses ideas about Afro-Arab identity and heritage, the transformative nature of the Sudanese toub, isolation, deviance, and femininity. She confronts exclusionary behaviors within contemporary art by choosing to present installation, projection, drawings, digital paintings and traditional paintings together. Her investigation of multiple mediums stems from her interest in the way that imagery and iconography translates/migrates from one space into another. Having spent her life moving between Sudan, Qatar, the UAE and the US, her intersectionality and migratory travel is the groundwork of her interdisciplinary practice.
WHAT ARE YOUR PREFERRED PRONOUNS?
She/her and they/them
WHERE DO YOU CALL HOME?
Khartoum, Sudan
WHAT IS YOUR PROGRAM AND YEAR OF GRADUATION?
LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting, MFA, 2023
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO TAKE THE LEAP OF GOING TO GRADUATE SCHOOL?
I missed being present in an academic atmosphere that would provide me with the physical space and communal support I needed in order to create. I also felt that previous institutions weren't adequately representing me as an intersectional/Afro-Arab woman. I came to graduate school because I wanted to rectify that.
HOW HAS THIS SCHOLARSHIP IMPACTED YOUR THINKING AND PROCESS DURING YOUR TIME IN GRADUATE SCHOOL?
Before coming to MICA, my work was focused on the study and making of portraiture within the context of contemporary art. This scholarship has allowed me the opportunity to find and center my practice on issues that are more closely tied to my personhood.
WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON? SHARE THE DRIVING QUESTIONS AND INSPIRATION THAT INFORMS YOUR WORK AS AN ARTIST, DESIGNER, EDUCATOR AND/OR ACTIVIST.
Some of the issues my work is concerned with include losing one's heritage, gender, Blackness and femininity within Sudan, and the ways of seeing images of women. Most recently, I've been creating digital paintings as an investigation into the capabilities for a virtual/digital space to provide a refuge for Otherized bodies.
