Muna Malik: SKIN + MAKS, Kavi Gupta | Elizabeth St.

  • Muna Malik (b. Yemen) is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist whose work studio practice is based on instigating conversations...

    Muna Malik (b. Yemen) is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist whose work studio practice is based on instigating conversations around her experiences of life as a Black woman and an immigrant in America. 

     

    “My work always has political undertones,” says Malik. “As an Arabic and Somali speaking immigrant who grew up in Minneapolis, I’ve always seen the world from a political landscape, and seen my identity within that same landscape. My work is recontextualizing what it means to be all these things, while still being ingrained in American society, not fitting into any one category.” 

     

    Malik uses a mixture of materials in her paintings, including raw pastels, acrylic, charcoal and chalk. The work is grounded in constant experimentation and the passage of time. Her paintings build up slowly, layer by layer. Sometimes she works on raw canvas, allowing the medium to fully express itself by inundating the surface. 

     

    The imagery in Malik’s work is abstract and symbolic. Geometric patterns and forms inspired by her architectural surroundings in Yemen blend with animated, gestural markings suggestive of the human hand. Malik describes her mixture of references as a way to talk about movement and migration within a structural framework, and as a way to use existing forms to start new conversations. 

     

    Malik is particularly aware of the larger than life aspects of distinctly American symbology. Among her most illustrative works is a large-scale abstract painting that references the visual language of an American flag. The painting slowly came together over the course of more than two years. Malik watched major world events playing out on the news—some were chaotic, some were calm—and let the overstimulation of the media coverage transform into the material and visual events happening on the canvas. In this painting, political and social developments manifested aesthetically as representations of movement and streaks of light, like fireworks in the night. 

     

    “Coming from Somali culture and Yemeni culture, all we do is live, breathe, talk political conversations, arguing and debating politics,” says Malik. “As an artist, I can dive in and dive out of it. I can have a physical purging so I don’t need to talk about it.”