Asma Istwani
Artist | Facilitator | Producer
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Asma is an early career artist working in London. She has been commissioned by several organisations on a variety of creative projects including Tate, Jo Malone London and Duke University Press.
To create her pieces Asma combines found images, magazine editorials, personal photography, paint and illustration. She employs a variety of traditional (handcut / "analog") and contemporary (digital) collage and graphic design styles and techniques in her work, which has been described as energetic, emotive and surreal.
Asma is most interested in adding to the larger narrative surrounding beauty standards and identity and aims to make relatable statements in her work about the racial and sexual depiction, representation and experience of "othered" women, with special interest to those who, like herself, make up the SWANA diaspora.
Her ultimate goal is to inspire in herself as well as the viewer, a sense of rebellion from the issues that add to individual and colle
collective feelings of disempowerment. She believes collage is the perfect medium for this as it allows her to “re-appropriate the master appropriators” and the very media deemed responsible, in part, for perpetuating and upholding oppressive ideology and systems.
Asma is also the founder of RIOT SOUP, an art collective and community for Black and Brown women artists in London.
EXHIBITIONS
The Pilot with RIOT SOUP, The Art of Movement Gallery, London, March 2019
The Residency with RIOT SOUP, hARTslane Gallery, London, July 2019
Ajoyo with ATA RODO London, Deptford Does Art, London, January 2020
Photography, Print & Works on Paper, Candid Arts, London, February 2020
Meraki, A Collective Soul x ATA RODO x Friends in my Ends, Old Street Gallery, London, July 2021
Watan, Cafe Palestina, London, August 2021
Religion & Diversity, Get The Trolls Out, University of Westminster, London, March 2023
selected clients
