Attiyyah Rahman

Attiyyah Rahman’s (b. 2002, Whitehaven, U.K.) multi-interdisciplinary practice explores fluctuating themes of memory, unresolved trauma, obsession, taboo and abandonment. Her concepts often manifest work of a poetically sensitive and psychologically uncomfortable nature that delves into an emotionally-charged atmosphere associated with the derealisation of the self. Her practice is guided by the autonomy of the fantasy, the psychological projection and semi-autobiographical experiences, where fiction and reality become increasingly indistinguishable. Her ways of making involve a variety of technical processes that range from industry-standard printing and metalwork, to carefully curating large-scale installations, and creating delicate traditional/digital drawings by hand. She often utilises the reoccurring motif of an androgynous cis-male character who functions as a malleable vessel for the ideas, questions and thoughts surrounding the contexts of her practice. She compares this character as an ephemeral shape-shifter; he is real in his own right—but is also not, functioning within the dimensions of the vertical and horizontal landscape that is situated between the continuously shifting territory of the real and the unreal. On a wider political level, her anime-inspired character is used to demonstrate questions and thoughts that revolve around controversial representations of gender, youth and taboo.

Her artistic process orientates around her active participation within spaces influenced by elements of fan-culture, video-games, film, anime aesthetics and particularly her consumption of BL (Boys’ Love) manga. She aims to combine these recognisable aesthetics and motifs inspired by this type of media with more personal and poetically ambiguous elements which are central to her girlhood experience of growing up within an environment predominantly devoid of cis-male presence. This experience is primarily embedded within subculture-focused musings concerning safe spaces, role-play fantasies, and the construction of fictional narratives that are further utilised to process and understand psychological trauma, materialised through text, visuals and sculptural installation. She is ultimately interested in positioning skewed ideas of intimacy, belonging, and the abject in unexpected situations, where these things are ultimately found in (or surrendered and given to) the wrong places—places which exist with a liminal in-betweenness, split between compromising dualities which look to critique wider musings concerning gender, sexuality, and identity.