Six Foot Gallery is delighted to present its annual Summer Show, featuring thirty-four artists working in a diverse range of mediums and disciplines.

Malak Naseem is a Maldives born, Sri Lanka raised, and Glasgow based artist currently studying Painting and Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art. She predominantly explores themes of the self and ‘home’: the fragile sense of belonging and the confusing tension within one’s identity.

As a mixed media artist, Malak allows herself to be dictated by different materials in the domestic environment, gaining meaning from the materiality and relating it to her personal experiences. Through stitching using hair, she infuses her DNA, making her work inherently personal yet fragile, and easy to break.

Hi Malak! Can you walk us through your creative process?
Recently, my creative process has consisted of great periods of daydreaming, reading/watching trash media whilst being heavily aware of the deeper work I want to do and collecting and organising my hair around the house. I tend to have a TV show I have binged previously as background noise when I have to do repetitive and tedious artwork, such as in my practice of stitching my hair into my paper sculptures.

How has your practice changed over time?
My practice used to be primarily collage and painting, but over the past two years, I made a weird yet natural move to printmaking, making sculptures out of paper and hair stitching. I rarely paint anymore. I find myself having to learn new methods and mediums to match my more conceptual style of artmaking, which in turn forces me to focus my energy on the different materials I use, such as newspaper, hair and taps.

Which artists inspire you? 
Mona Hatoum. Her art has had a profound effect on me and I can talk about her work for hours. I know that for a fact because I have done so in the past. The way she infuses her personal history into seemingly ordinary domestic objects to make something so much bigger than herself is beyond impressive. She strikes the perfect balance between the personal and general and sucks you into the piece as she plays with the size and space her work situates in. Hatoum was the first artist I ever had a visceral connection to, the first time I looked at a piece of work and said I totally get it. Of course, I did not ‘totally’ get it, her work has such intense layers upon layers that encourage the viewer to research the contextual and political histories of her work. I would highly recommend reading and looking into her works Present Tense and Remains of the Day for a deeper introduction. 

What emotions or reactions do you hope viewers experience when they see your artwork?
Any emotion, just for the piece to evoke an emotion is good enough for me. In the past, I have had viewers of my work be impressed by my stitching skills, but upon the realisation that the thread I have used is my own hair, it evokes completely different reactions and emotions. Disgust, sometimes.

As my work ‘Hairy Taps, Part 1’ is still at its beginning stages, I am happy with any feedback. I honestly do not mind that some viewers will not know or understand the context of my work: a more complicated personal history about my gender and in relation to the politics of my home country, Maldives. If all they see and think about are papier mache taps with hair stitched into them, that is just fine with me.

Are there specific advantages or challenges associated with working in your chosen mediums? Have you experimented with other mediums or techniques?
One massive advantage to my practice is that I produce my own materials: hair. I collect hair from my hairbrush, around the house, and the drain – which can be a challenge. As I use local newspapers from the Maldives, there is a challenge in that I have to wait for someone travelling from South Asia to the UK to receive the materials.

Hair stitching as a method can be difficult, purely because I work in small areas on fragile materials and have to be patient in completing the task. I have used normal embroidery thread in the past but found it a lot less exciting and less meaningful than using hair as the primary material.

Will your next project be a continuation of your current style or are you experimenting with something different? Can you share a glimpse of your next project?
I plan to continue the ‘Hairy Taps’ series and hopefully make many more taps. I love making small fragile pieces to form something larger and infuse context that may or may not be communicated through. This summer a friend of mine and I have been collecting bathroom sinks and pipes to make weird sculptures, so overall  I will be sticking to the shapes and forms in the bathroom as inspiration.

You can find out more about Malak and her work on Instagram @malakn_art. Our Summer Open Call Exhibition runs at Six Foot Gallery until Friday 23rd August.