Since moving to the UK from Dubai in 2010, Birmingham-based artist Farwa Moledina has set about reclaiming the narrative around Muslim women. “I think there’s an erasure of Muslim women in contemporary art. There’s a singular narrative that you find in museum and gallery spaces. There’s never an alternative presented.”
Moledina, who has exhibited work at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the Midlands Art Centre and also as part of the Lahore Biennale, creates strong, intricate works that incorporate patterns, textiles and symbols. She is inspired by the work of the Moroccan photographer Lalla Essaydi, who is best known for her depiction of Arabic female identity, and also by the writer Edward Said’s critique of orientalism.
