BioNatasha Malik received her BFA from the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore in 2012, and her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2015. Malik’s practice encompasses painting, drawing, installation, film, printmaking, and photography. The formative years of her artistic practice focused on Indo-Persian miniature painting, particularly its history and traditional techniques. Drawing from its rich visual vocabulary, she references the painting styles of the Pahari and Mughal Schools, their approach to materiality, form, and two-dimensional perspective, investigating contemporary concerns around the female body, sexuality, loss, and memory. Weaving together personal experiences with Indian pre-colonial visual history, whilst focusing on regional socio-cultural issues around gender, she aims to challenge and dismantle oppressive narratives imposed on the subjectivities of the brown female body and creative practice. Malik lives and works in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Artist Statement | Legacies of Crossings
The formative years of Malik’s artistic practice focused on specialising in miniature painting, particularly its history and traditional techniques. Her multi-media approach, which is rooted in this tradition, draws from its rich visual vocabulary, whilst addressing contemporary concerns around the female body, sexuality, loss, and memory. She deepens these investigations by challenging the foundation of Indo-Persian miniature painting, in the context of regional history, culture and colonialism.
A dominant thread in her work is the autobiographical, through which she explores female identity and sexuality developed within the constraints of patriarchy.Visceral reactions to tensions and trauma experienced under oppressive patriarchal structures are processed through her imagery, which grounds the female protagonist in landscapes of the psyche. The image becomes a space to confront the frictions between interiority and the predominant systems of patriarchy and capitalism. Within this broad spectrum, she addresses questions around the perception and expectations of the gendered body, by creating intimate psychological landscapes occupied by the solitary, introspective female figure, who is attempting to maintain her agency and sense of self. She examines the relationship between memory, materiality and making, to confront anxieties around the existential, particularly in relation to mortality, grief, alienation, and absurdity.