Photo Credit: Azraa Motala
Azraa Motala – Unapologetic
British Textile Biennial 2021
Azraa Motala creates work that seeks to untangle culturally inherited expectations and the overlapping aspects of her own identity as a young British-Asian Muslim woman, exploring the way in which women from the diaspora have been represented in both the past and the present day, particularly through their dress. Through large scale oil paintings, she re-appropriates the European image of the Eastern woman as it was depicted in so-called Orientalist paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries; essentially adopting the same medium to portray opposing imagery and challenging the accepted notion of dress.
Unapologetic challenges the ongoing narrative of “otherness” and provides a platform for an overlooked community of young British South Asian women from Lancashire, too often invisible and unheard.
Unapologetic is a co-commission with The Harris, Preston