Farwa Moledina was born in 1993 in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and moved to England in 2010 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She studied Fine Art at Birmingham School of Art (c.2015–18) and is currently based in Birmingham. She creates work which addresses multiculturalism, the white male gaze, voyeurism and representations of Muslim women in both art history and contemporary culture.
Mixed media artist and photographer, Farwa Moledina was born in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 1993 and moved to England in 2010 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She subsequently studied Fine Art at Birmingham School of Art (c.2015–18) and began to receive immediate critical acclaim. Her photographic and textile work explores identity and multiculturalism and is concerned with mainstream portrayals of Muslim women. Moledina’s photography incorporates pattern and textile, inviting the viewer to look out for intricate details within each piece. Her finely detailed, often colourful and decorated artworks are inspired by the distinctive characteristics of Islamic design: floral motifs, geometric designs and calligraphy. Her 2018 series Interwoven featured portraits of sitters from Muslim, Sikh and African backgrounds, all wearing traditional cultural headdresses with patterns that matched the wallpaper behind them. Upon careful inspection, the ornate wallpaper displayed stereotypical 'British' symbols, such as teacups and red phone boxes. The artist stated that Interwoven represented ‘an acquisition of local culture whilst maintaining one’s roots’, and in doing so sparked conversations surrounding multicultural identities and the transfusion of cultures (Radical Art Review, 2019). In the same year Moledina also created her work Not Your Fantasy which, again, incorporated both pattern and textile into her photography. This work was exhibited at Ways of Belonging at the Midlands Arts Centre (2019), Women, Power, Protest at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2018–19), New Art West Midlands x The Coventry Biennial at The Row (2019) and The John Ruskin Prize at The Holden Gallery (2019), for which she was also shortlisted. Not Your Fantasy was heavily influenced by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres’ infamous nude painting, Le Grande Odalisque (1814). The photographic work featured images of women either peering behind curtains, or wearing a heavy cloak. The cloak and curtain fabric was designed by Moledina and featured kaleidoscopic reproductions of the nude female figure taken from Ingres’ work. The cloak was a product of her previous Not Your Harem Girl (2018) work, in which she deconstructed the exotic and erotic orientalist gaze on Muslim and eastern women.
Moledina’s art also investigates ‘Orientalism’ — a term used by the Palestinian-American sociologist Edward Said (1935-2003) to dictate the ‘Othering’ and exoticism experienced by the Middle East at the hands of Western voyeurism. Her work reflects on Orientalism and its relation to the white male gaze, voyeurism, and representations of Muslim women in both art history and contemporary culture. In 2019 Moledina exhibited her works No One is Neutral Here (2019) and You Must Choose your Part in the End (2019) at an exhibition entitled A Rich Tapestry at the Lahore Biennale, alongside work by the British artists Mahtab Hussain, Matthew Krishanu and Osman Yousefzada; and Pakistani artists, Ali Kazim and Imran Qureshi. The exhibition was organised in conjunction with Birmingham's Ikon Gallery and artist Aisha Khalid, and was intent on creating an exchange between Lahore, Pakistan and Birmingham, England. Throughout May 2020, Moledina participated in the New Art Gallery Walsall’s Stay at Home Residency Series during the holy month of Ramadan. Throughout Ramadan, communities often come together to celebrate the breaking of the fast (Iftar). However, amid the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, communities experienced Ramadan enitirely differently, in lockdown. In response to this, Moledina's residency incorporated social media to encourage members of the Muslim community to share their Iftar. Moledina held virtual celebrations, which were shared across her own social media channels and on the New Art Gallery Walsall’s website.
Other recent work has included Thawra (2020) which depicted six revolutionary Muslim women from 626 AD–2019 in her staple kaleidoscopic style. The term ‘Thawra’ translates to ‘Revolution’ and relates particularly to the 2011–12 Arab Spring (a series of protests in response to oppressive regimes that spread across the Arab world). Thawra was shown at the group show Thirteen Ways of Looking (2020) at The Herbert Gallery, Coventry; other notable participating artists and curators included Donald Rodney, Eddie Chambers, Keith Piper, Navi Kaur and Roshini Kempadoo. In 2021 Moledina participated in an art trail accompanying artist, Osman Yusefada's covering of the entire facade of Selfridges' department store in Birmingham in the world's largest canvas. Moledina's work Women of Paradise, exhibited at the Isokon Gallery ( 2022), was a response to the singular religious narratives that dominate museums and galleries, and which rarely offer depictions of the Virgin Mary outside of the Christian narrative. Moledina’s work sought to challenge this assumption of neutrality by providing a different perspective.
Farwa Moledina's work is represented in the UK public domain in the collection of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the New Art Gallery, Walsall.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Farwa Moledina]
Publications related to [Farwa Moledina] in the Ben Uri Library