Shumaiya Khan

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist statement

Shumaiya Khan (b. 1990, UK), a painter, sculptor, and installation artist. My practice is informed by recurring instinctual forms that arise through somatic and symbiotic release. These forms reflect a mirroring between the metaphysical and physical body, often echoed in the natural world around us. My work is rooted in both research and a physical, hands-on process. Research includes feminine origin ancient mythologies, mysticism, animism and Jungian archetypes. These explorations consider my past self’s journey within the spiritual realm and how an eventual descent into the underworlds and eventual ascension affect my everyday position on the current socio-political landscape the feminine I am finds herself in. A personal release of facades inherited from an industrialised and patriarchal world content on upholding external accolades over the human care and condition. There is a deep honouring of time, initiation, and movement between myself and the worlds I inhabit. My paintings and sculptures emerge through repeated layering, washing away, and rebuilding oil paint mixed with salt. This process creates fast, visceral, full-bodied, and textured surfaces. The resulting works are installed as immersive environments, often combining stretched and folded paintings—suspended with ribbons or supported by treated wood structures—alongside ceramic sculptures. Conversations arise over how a new world could be, how we are to honour a wilder, grounded self. Works honour the wide...

Artwork

• The Mountain of Many Sides takes Two Days to Climb, 2025. Double-sided painting. Oil, salt, ribbon and cotton muslin drape on suspended, folded canvas. Hangs on Devonshire steel reinforced burnt birch spear.
• Two of Wands, 2025. Burnt Devonshire Birch
• Seven Apples for Seven Heavens, 2025. Clear glazed porcelain.
• The Root of Our Roots Lies a Field We Call a Body, 2025. Oil and salt on canvas. Framed in burnished reclaimed timber.
• The Third Branch of The Most Beloved Tree, 2025. Oil, salt, and charcoal on canvas.
• The Fifth Branch of The Most Beloved Tree, 2025. Oil, salt and charcoal on paper and canvas
• The Third Gate Up the Mountain Holds An Ash Engraved Tinder Box, 2025. Oil, salt, charcoal, ribbon and draped cotton muslin on canvas
• The Second Body, 2024. Oil, oil stick, salt, madder dye and charcoal, on semi-primed, loose canvas
• Eros, 2024. Oil on semi primed canvas