Azraa Motala - Unapologetic

British Textile Biennial 

Azraa Motala creates work that seeks to untangle culturally inherited expectations and the overlapping aspects of her own identity as a young British-Asian Muslim woman, exploring the way in which women from the diaspora have been represented in both the past and the present day, particularly through their dress. Through large scale oil paintings, she re-appropriates the European image of the Eastern woman as it was depicted in so-called Orientalist paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries; essentially adopting the same medium to portray opposing imagery and challenging the accepted notion of dress.

Unapologetic challenges the ongoing narrative of “otherness” and provides a platform for an overlooked community of young British South Asian women from the North West, too often invisible and unheard, whose painted portraits will be displayed at the Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery and reproduced on banners, hung on The Town Hall in Blackburn, The Haworth Art Gallery in Accrington, Towneley Hall in Burnley and Nelson Library in Nelson.  

Unapologetic is a co-commission with The Harris, Preston