Farah Maktari

I am a London-based artist who graduated from Chelsea College of Arts with a Fine Arts degree. My practice examines a personal cultural archive, reclaiming agency over Middle Eastern cultures by playfully merging historical and fictional narratives. With a background in textiles, history, and fine art, I enjoy exploring the value of innovative narratives expressed through curation and publications, having co-curated and showcased work in various exhibitions and working across multiple galleries. I am also interested in challenging the access to art and history from institutions, fostering a dialogue to shift perspectives.

Art Statement:

My practice explores how to regain the cultural agency of diasporic heritage by playfully merging the historical and fictional through archives, folklore, and childhood recollections. I illustrate this imagination as a form of heritage. I use a personal cultural archive of Yemeni/Middle Eastern culture to create a visually rich and complex world that examines how we can reinvent and honour traditions and rituals that are disappearing in the contemporary world.

I work across disciplines, including painting, tapestry, interactive installations of traditional dances, and collections of handmade costumes and objects theatrically displayed. Through these playful forms, it opens a dialogue to discuss themes of decolonisation, object-oriented ontology, and grief, as each piece challenges how we process the absence of archives and preserve culture. Pieces like ‘Echoes of Other’, a series of cabinets and tapestries showcasing personal and fabricated artefacts, blend parodies of Western pop culture figures with ancient mythology and texts to reflect an ever-changing state of identity. Merging science fiction, memory, and traditions opens a conversation on how heritage can function in the present time.

Through my work, I aim to actively revive cultural practices and challenge our relationships regarding the boundaries of what heritage entails in today’s world and how institutions and historical accounts have shaped contemporary narratives. I believe that memory serves as a form of archive that holds an authentic state of being, and my practice seeks ways to navigate the presence and absence within archives through playful imagination.