Maha Ahmed

Maha Ahmed (b. 1989, lives & works in Dubai) is a trained miniature artist who is interested in the deconstruction of identity, the self-positioning within a cultural context and society’s reactions to the individual. Ahmed draws inspiration from Persian and Mughal manuscripts and from the tradition of Japanese landscape painting with its contemplative, meditative compositions of water, plants, rocks and animals. In her works, Ahmed places hybrid creatures into imagined utopian landscapes. Her subjects subtly inhabit spaces that are not dominated by humans but reserved instead for the unfolding of dreams, for imaginings and for emotions. Her paintings can be read as documents of identity construction, cross-cultural experiences and transformative events that occurred in the artists’ personal life.