1990, Cairo, Egypt. Lives and works in Cairo, Egypt MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London, BA in Visual Arts from the American University in Cairo. Drifting between the fantastical and the corporeal, the psychological and the sensory, Nada Baraka‘s works seek to articulate a situation rather than a fixed form as her paintings give presence to experiences that are fleeting, felt, or repressed. Through an eclectic visual language — ranging from 1960s and 70s design and animation to cartoonish depictions or Japanese comics — she conjures charged, dreamlike scenes that verge on the inappropriate and the bizarre as a sense of elusiveness permeates her compositions. Instants gleaned from the inventory of oneiric impression whose lingering after-effect confers a sense of hovering suspense. In a broadening of her artistic gesture Nada Baraka’s practice equally encompasses installation which unfolds as an immediate, visceral response to external stimuli. Across her work, she creates surreal environments shaped by absurdity and psychic transformation. From early explorations of fleshy corporeal forms, her iconographic vocabulary has since evolved into expansive spatial compositions where the physical body is refracted and dispersed within the surrounding landscapes. Nada Baraka’s process thereby emerges from a haptic and situational origin: harsh strokes collide with soft gestures, while phantasmic forms emerge through an assemblage of collected visual imagery. Always in a state of metamorphosis and flux, the human body in her work transforms and reacts to its surrounding environment with emotional and psychic force. Her most recent work has since taken on a more contextual turn, with a response to the personal archive of her late grandfather, Egypt’s former Minister of Irrigation. Through site-specific installations, Nada Baraka has been exploring the materiality of archives and the spaces they occupy, questioning how memory and history are embedded in and shaped by physical objects and environments. Nada Baraka has had solo and group exhibitions at Tabari Art Space (Dubai), Gypsum Gallery (Cairo), Mashrabia Gallery (Cairo), Ebony Curated (Cape Town), WHAT IF THE WORLD Gallery (Cape Town), Goethe Institute (Cairo), Artsmart (Cairo), Opera House (Cairo), Mostra (Lisbon), Lethaby (London), V22 (London), Darb 1718 (Cairo), Sharjah (Cairo)