Jala Wahid, Like a Wayward Flame, 2019 Photo: Damian Griffiths
'The Kurdish identity of London-based Jala Wahid is central to her sensitive, often tactile work, through which she explores the politics that have shaped a stateless people, history and iconography. Kurdish symbols, such as the sun rays of the national flag, make appearances in her imagery, while music, text and film create a multi-sensorial experience. Sculpture is used as an emotive mode of suggestion, such as the sleek lower bodies of women draped in folds of cloth that appear almost damp to the touch. Materials including steel, gelatine, sugar and oil make appearances in Wahid’s work, and embody the tension between the natural and the manmade, and the human and the industrial, which infuses her interrogation of national identity and the self.'
