At Buro247 Middle East, we are committed to showcasing and celebrating the extraordinary talent in the Arab world. With our column, #BuroSpotlights, we bring you stories of pioneering artists, innovative designers, tech trailblazers, cinematic visionaries, sports stars, and more.
This week, #BuroSpotlights Kuwaiti artist Alymamah Rashed.
Some artists paint to express; others, like Alymamah Rashed, paint to question, dissect, and reconstruct the world around them. A Kuwaiti visual artist with a vision that defies conventional boundaries, Rashed crafts a universe where personal identity, folklore, and the natural environment merge. Her work is an ongoing dialogue that challenges the tensions between the East and the West, the past and the present, the physical and the spiritual. Through striking surrealist compositions, she positions her body as both the subject and the storyteller, questioning the very framework of identity in a rapidly changing world.
Born and raised in Kuwait, Rashed honed her craft in New York, earning her MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in 2019 and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2016. Her time in the U.S. exposed her to a wider artistic discourse, further deepening her exploration of identity and duality. While many artists struggle to reconcile multiple influences, Rashed embraces the contradictions, using them as fuel for her artistic practice.
At the heart of Rashed’s work is the concept of the Muslima Cyborg—a fusion of human experience, spiritual intelligence, and technological evolution. Unlike the traditional idea of a cyborg as a mechanical entity, her interpretation is deeply rooted in an organic, almost ethereal intelligence. It is a body in flux, constantly shifting between the conventional and contemporary, between self and society.
She builds her narrative, pulling from everyday encounters, regional folklore, and the rapid industrialization of the Gulf. There’s an undeniable tension in her work, a push and pull between heritage and transformation.
What makes Rashed truly compelling is her ability to translate personal experience into a universal conversation. Through her art, she questions, deconstructs, and reconstructs. Her work forces viewers to confront their ownrelationships with identity, tradition, and transformation. In a time when the world is more interconnected yet fragmented than ever, Rashed’s art serves as both a reflection and a reckoning.
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