ABOUT

Shumaiya Khan, 1990, UK. Painter, sculptor and installation artist. My practice is informed by reoccurring instinctual forms received via symbiotic and somatic release, referencing a mirroring between both metaphysical and physical bodies to the external natural world. There is an honouring of time, initiation and movement between myself and the worlds I inhabit. The feeling of a moment is more important than a life-like visual representation of it. My practice is part research and physical-practice based.

Research includes feminine origin ancient mythologies, mysticism, animism and Jungian archetypes. These explorations consider my past self’s journey within the spiritual realm and how an eventual descent into the underworlds and eventual ascension affect my everyday position on the current socio-political landscape the feminine I am finds herself in. A personal release of facades inherited from an industrialised and patriarchal world content on upholding external accolades over human care and condition. 

Conversations arise over how a new world could be, how we are to honour a wilder, grounded self. Works honour the wide spectrum of emotions, histories and their subsequent actions, which include but are not limited to; rage, intuition, power, devotion and/or worship, lust, peace and joy. 

Each work is a private conversation between myself and the work itself, taking place across otherworldly realms. Pieces are arranged as an installation, often comprising of paintings both stretched and folded and/or suspended via ribbon and treated wooden supports, and various ceramic-based sculptures. 

Works often embody hidden elemental surfaces or entities, often bodily shaped and height. Forms and environments which appear grow, erode or age; resembling trees in a forest, hot lava, bones, flesh, muscle and veins in a body. To build a new world, it has to be physically made from the inside out.

The alchemical is physically present in my works, be it via; salt added to oil paint, wood turned to charcoal, and the extraction of oil from seeds. The element salt is used in every painting; acting as shamanic device via paintings to the audience, as both contain sodium, thus nurturing a collective connection through alchemy. Salt allows creation of full-bodied, industrious and visceral texture in an aim to ground myself back into this waking world.