I am a Maldivian/Sri Lankan artist based in Scotland. Through film, printmaking and ‘hair-stitching’, I explore the familial and uncomfortable connections between migration, domesticity and politics, often using discarded materials.
In dissecting Edward Said’s ideas of the ‘Orientalist gaze’, forgotten familial and colonial history turns to deconstruction and reconstruction, creating the fragility of already fading histories. Ideas within post-minimalism, of embedding complicated personal history into minimalist grid-like forms, are present throughout.
Transient materials, such as newspaper and packaging paper and the process of lithography, which has its history intertwined with the production of newspaper and other forms of publishing, create contradictions within the agency the non-western world faces in controlling its stories, both currently and historically.
Delicate constructions of fragile narratives hang by strands of hair, filled with gaps and incomplete images, much like the holes in a family’s collective memory. An unrecognisable language to the western eye is used throughout, creating barriers and an inability to understand a protected familial history.
EXHIBITIONS
(*) For Solo Exhibitions
2026
The Quiet Gaze, Alchemy Experiment, Glasgow.
Coupling, Stuck? Collective, Fern Cafe, Glasgow.
2025.
Inventory, Stow Building, GSA, Glasgow.
Domesticity, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow
Concretion, Barnes Garage, Glasgow.
Industry, GSA Library, Glasgow.
Borders, Cass Art, Glasgow.
Two Fold, StrangeFieldsFrench Street, Glasgow.
Weird Studies, Alchemy Experiment, Glasgow.
WIP, StrangeFieldsFrench Street, Glasgow.
Echo Locate, Fitzpatrick hall, Queens College, Cambridge.
2024
*Coral Stone Bricks, The LAB Gallery, GSA, Glasgow.
Sorry, Can You Say The Again?, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow.
MEMENTO VIVERI, Six Foot Gallery, Glasgow.
Troubled Grounds, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow.
SFG Summer Exhibition, Six Foot Gallery, Glasgow.
SWATCHEDx Sterling, The Haberdashery, Glasgow.
Night Shift, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow.
Cultivating Craft, WASPS Hanson Street Studios, Glasgow.
Salon Des Inclusion, Annex Gallery, GSA, Glasgow.
SQUEEZE, Reid Gallery, GSA, Glasgow.
Traces, The Vic, GSA, Glasgow.
WIP Exhibition, Student Flat Exhibition, Glasgow.
2023
OFFSET, Alchemy Experiment, Glasgow.
1st Year Group Show, Barnes Garage Space, Glasgow.
PUBLICATIONS
2026
FACS Anthology 2026
Chromatopia, Zine by Alekia G.
Lost + Found, Zine by artist Rosie Boyce.
2025
The SKINNY: Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival Reviews, The SKINNY Magazine.
The SKINNY: GSA Degree Show, Architecture supplement, The SKINNY Magazine.
COPY Magazine Issue II, COPY Magazine.
2024
Mythologies, Field Project Zine.
MOZ MAG Issue I, MOZ Society.
Myriad of Mirrors, DominAsian Magazine
Beginnings, Field Project Zine.
COPY MAG Issue I, COPY Magazine.
Movements, Field Project Zine.
malaknaseemart@gmail.com
Based in Glasgow.