Maitha Abdalla

Maitha Abdalla

Biography Maitha Abdalla discovered her passion for arts at an early age, however it was through Art and Design courses in London at Middlesex University that her understanding of art flourished and she went on to gain a BA in Visual Arts from the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University. As if harnessing the subconscious, Abdalla’s work oscillates between the diaphanous, vibrant and surreal, and is always marked by an atmosphere of reminiscence and nostalgia. Often evolved into series articulating strong cultural narratives, her paintings and mixed media works are assemblages of memory, travel and human interactions. Informed by exchanges and experiences, her socially driven commentaries on the human condition reveal astute, intuitive observations on the world around her in a narrative form. A particularly influential encounter was with children at an orphanage where Maitha taught English and art. The motifs of childhood began to permeate her work after this time, becoming an eloquent vernacular in which she further explores the difference between the imaginary and the real; mapping the liminal space between these interconnected worlds, she plays out many questions of social and cultural identity.