Azraa Motala | Solo Show
Curator
Northern artist Azraa Motala, a recent graduate from the Chelsea College of Arts and finalist for the Robert Walters Group UK Young Artists Award in partnership with Saatchi Art Gallery exhibited her first solo show at Prism Contemporary.
Exploring her identity as a young British Asian Muslim women within a contemporary Western space Azraa creates large scale oil paintings seeking to appropriate the image of Eastern Women as depicted from orientalist paintings from the 18th and 19th century.
'My work seeks to untangle culturally inherited expectations, and the overlapping aspects of my identity as a young British-Asian Muslim woman within the contemporary Western space. I am inherently interested in the way in which women from the diaspora have been represented in both the past and the present day. As women of the diaspora, our identities are constructed from the spaces in between.’
An exhibition of works was curated with a complimentary video piece, opening night sound-track and indian hot drinks, which sought to express further the dimensions of Azraas character and influences. Challenging the notions of the labels placed on her as a female Asian artist; and her determination to paint despite peers encouraging her to pursue a speedier and more lucrative art form.
