Sadia Fakih

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Sadia Fakih, “Untitled (Meena becomes the Medusa),” 2022

acrylic and mixed media on black canvas board, 14" x 11" (courtesy VivianeArt, Calgary)

A tangled mass of vibrantly patterned snakes writhe and coil around a stylized female face. Red forked tongues seem to flicker and hiss as they navigate Calgary-based artist Sadia Fakih’s elaborately decorative painting. Whimsical and otherworldly, Untitled (Meena Becomes the Medusa) is one of Fakih’s latest acrylic and mixed media paintings. Like the others, it’s riveting.

Mythologies of the Interspace, on view at VivianeArt in Calgary until July 9, is this emerging artist’s first solo show. Fakih’s work is rich with diverse influences. Her parents emigrated from Pakistan, arriving in Canada in the mid-1970s. She was born in Nova Scotia and grew up in Ontario. She has been influenced by classical Persian and Indian miniature painting, and explores cultural hybridity, displacement, intersectionality and the surreal.

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Sadia Fakih, “Pink Composite Elephant,” 2023

acrylic and mixed media on black canvas board, 36" x 24" (courtesy VivianeArt, Calgary)

Using black canvas board as her base, she places figures cut from drawing paper or other collage material and then immerses them within decorative and dreamlike painted narratives both layered and lush. In Pink Composite Elephant, an assortment of animals and humans are reconfigured to form a majestic elephant. The animal is surrounded by a galaxy bursting with abstracted orbs, scattered leaves and polka dots. Suspended above this beastly apparition is a moon trapped within a triangle. The details of each element are enthralling. Fragmented figures are squeezed together to form the elephant’s body and legs, while a reclining woman’s leg curls elegantly to form a magnificent trunk. 

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Sadia Fakih, “Swan Dreams,” 2022

acrylic and mixed media on black canvas board, 14" x 22" (courtesy VivianeArt, Calgary)

While Fakih’s paintings are meticulously composed, they are not linear. Within these “liminal dream spaces,” as she calls them, are disruptions – green roots grow from suspended grids or female figures seem to sprout from or merge with the landscape.

The female figure – sometimes fragmented, sometimes in multiples – plays a prominent role in Fakih’s recent work. In Swan Dreams, for example, we are pulled into a bejewelled dreamscape with flowing patterns that swirl around a sun haloed by a rainbow. A black void disrupts this seemingly serene and whimsical scene. In the lower right corner, three bulbous toes poke out mysteriously from under an ornately rendered blue river.

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Sadia Fakih, “Untitled (Daughters of South-Asian Immigrants),” 2023

acrylic and mixed media on wood panel, 20" x 20" (courtesy VivianeArt, Calgary)

In other works, like Untitled (Daughters of South-Asian Immigrants), women collectively assert their beauty and personality. And Untitled (Meena-Siren Plays With Alchemy and Gives Birth to the Stars) erupts into multiple faces that look like shiny stars. In both works, figures and faces are wonderfully stylized, shifting boldly between abstraction and realism.

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Sadia Fakih, “Untitled (Meena-Siren Plays With Alchemy and Gives Birth to the Stars),” 2022

acrylic and mixed media on black canvas board, 24" x 18" (courtesy VivianeArt, Calgary)

Fakih borrowed the name Meena from the late Bollywood actress Meena Kumari, who becomes an alter ego for exploring female representation and disrupting ideas about femininity, beauty, racialized bodies and existential tragedy.

Influences from female surrealist painters, like Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo, also play throughout the work. Fakih uses symbols rooted in mythology, magic and alchemy, as well as self-portraiture, via an alter ego, to disrupt the male gaze and challenge stereotypes about the female muse. 

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Sadia Fakih, “Venus Fly Trap,” 2022

acrylic and mixed media on black canvas board, diptych, 14" x 22" (courtesy VivianeArt, Calgary)

For instance, the mirrored halves of a saturated pink form in the diptych Venus Fly Trap recall Kahlo’s bleeding hearts. The shape also reads like a carnivorous flower or even an elephant’s ears. Dense and richly textured, it comes to life with curvy tendrils, razor-sharp thorns and disturbing eyeballs.

Fakih, who completed her MFA in 2019 at the School of Visual Arts in New York City two years after earning a BFA at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, is already producing bold work that is aesthetically and conceptually complex. Each of her laboriously constructed pieces engages viewers in a symbiotic dance between the real and the imagined. ■

Sadia Fakih, Mythologies of the Interspace, at VivianeArt in Calgary from May 19 to July 9, 2023.

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