Azraa Motala
BRIT-ISH
2023
Azraa Motala
Medium:
Digital and printed billboards
Displayed:
UK-wide, September - October 2023
Artwork Description:
Brit-ish is an intimate visual representation of Motala’s complex relationship with her South-Asian and British identity, and references her time spent living in the South Lakes – a rural environment of the kind that can sometimes feel isolating to people of colour, and in which they are rarely portrayed.
Artist's Comment:
I speak to my Nana in broken sentences, stringing together phrases of Guajarati and English. We talk about home and mangoes and sugar cane, I’m left nostalgic for a place i haven’t been, living in the spaces between two continents. England and India, a child of diaspora.
Bio:
Azraa Motala is a visual artist from Preston, currently based between the North West and the Midlands. Her practice and research explores the lived experiences of British South Asian women, including notions of identity, belonging, culture and heritage within the context of the contemporary Western space. Negotiating the position of insider and outsider in and amongst the familiar and foreign. Through large scale oil paintings, photography, poetry, video and site specific interventions she explores the polarity of the East and West, history, politics, empire and orientalist depictions of women in art.
Curator's Comment:
Azraa’s powerful self-portrait is accompanied by an equally powerful and personal poem, which you can find below. It is a must read. Be ready to be moved.
