Three Wise Women

Shumaiya Khan, b 1990:

My practice explores the connection between all organic beings metaphysical bodies with the physical state. I investigate this via reoccurring instinctual forms within my paintings and sculptures, often received via symbiotic and somatic release. My practice is both research and physical, hands-on process. References can mirror human bodies and flesh, including veins and muscular systems, as well as hidden or concealed elemental surfaces and landscapes found in the inner depths of forests, caves, and quarries. There’s a quality of meeting or embodying entities, as works are often bodily shaped and height. Forms and environment which appear grow, erode or age.

I build out internal worlds to interact with our external realms and vice versa. Works produced with oil, salt, ceramic, and textile. Paintings and sculptures emerge through repeated layering, washing away, rebuilding oil paint mixed with salt; creating visceral, full-bodied, and textured surfaces. The resulting works are installed as immersive environments which both exhibit the record of my body at work and a mythic opening and reconstructing to a more abstracted body. Combining stretched and folded paintings, suspended with ribbons or supported by treated wood structures, alongside ceramic sculptures.

I take into consideration feminine origin ancient mythologies, mysticism and animism, which consider my past self’s journey within spiritual realms. This brings questions on my everyday position on the current socio-political landscape the feminine I am finds herself in, while acknowledging facades inherited from industrialised patriarchal worlds, content on upholding external accolades over the human care and condition.

About the work:

Three Wise Women, 2025. Oil and salt on canvas. Triptych. 175 x170cm / 60×170-55×170-60x170cm.

Originally three stand alone panels which uncannily came together. Loosely based on the tale of the three wise men, with a reimagining through matriarchal lineage and action. Each panel is bodily height/width, unravelling an illustrated, mythic resemblance of the physical internal body. Growing or giving birth to another body.

https://www.shumaiyakhan.com/

Tannery Projects

This display is a part of Tannery Arts’ occasional exhibition and events programme run by and for Tannery Artists. Tannery Projects aims to encourage new discourse between Tannery Artists and engagement with London contemporary art, through excellence and innovation.