On Creating: Maitha Abdalla

Maitha Abdalla’s practice combines film, photography, sculpture, painting, drawing and performance. She harnesses the performative and constructed character of the theatre to tackle themes that range from folklore and mythology, to gender, social conditioning, and psychology. For the artist, the theatre is a space where she might confront and destabilise what she has encountered in her social world, her imaginations, and her memories at an objective distance. The artist’s fantastical scenes shift between abstraction and representation and are charged with drama and melancholy. She constructs characters that embody a distinct vector of her persona often constrained within tight domestic spaces that expose their vulnerability. For Abdalla, her process is a continuation of the performance. She employs a bodily approach to painting, often applying dense layers of oil and acrylic paint with her fingertips and tracing around her own figure with gestural smears of charcoal.