Dhikr

Oil on wood

23" x 16.5"

UK delivery only (to enquire about worldwide shipping, DM or email)

First piece of the 'Orientalised' collection.

About the Collection;

“ORIENTALISED” is a collection of oil paintings by Fatima Mahmood built upon the idea of redefining ‘Orientalism’. Defined by Edward Said as ‘a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the orient’, their artworks depicted the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, primarily Muslim cultures, in an exotic, romanticised and often perverted way. Western Orientalist art was disparaging and inaccurate, and as Said argues were ‘political and served to justify Western Colonialism and Imperialism’.

This art collection aims to restructure the very fabric of orientalist artworks through the use of abstraction and recreation. The paintings in this collection are based upon real orientalist artworks in which Fatima Mahmood has chosen to distort by repainting the subjects in her own style and medium to humanise the people depicted. The pieces have a distinct style of the subjects painted on a visible underpainting which gives the impression that the piece is unfinished. This intentional absence of the rest of the painting is a means of stripping away the colonial context of which the original painting was created. Mahmood aims to thereby reposition the gaze of the viewer without the distraction of an exaggerated western fantasy and for the audience to recognise their own preconceptions. If you listen closely, the subjects speak for themselves, undistorted by a historically oppressive gaze. In doing so, she aims to reclaim the true meaning and individuality of her own heritage and other respective cultures within those regions.