Rayya Fadlo Khuri
MA Fine Arts - Central Saint Martins, 2023
Rayya Fadlo Khuri is a London-based artist whose writing-based practice deconstructs her experiences with disability and whose painting-based practice re-interprets contemporary landscape painting.
Through the act of writing, Khuri uses her poetic voice to make folded A3 limited editions that discuss her personal experiences with disability and with the world at large. Her words assert her story, because after epileptic episodes she briefly lost her ability to speak. These words became an expression of self, and her editions are meant to be read aloud.
Through the act of painting, Khuri applies the principles of watercolour painting to oil, creating a minimalist stage that is emptied of commercial objects and enables the viewer to dream, alongside the painter. The paintings escape a tradition of landscape painting that is often tied to a particular locale, by embracing the liminal, unseen and forgotten. Khuri uses materiality in these large-scale oil paintings to express light through the act of mark-making, particularly in monochromatic blue and sepia tones.
Khuri earned a BFA at Pratt Institute in New York in 2021, majoring in Painting and minoring in Writing and Literature and Art History, leading a book club and interning at Artforum and AUB Library Archives Department, while on a Presidential Scholarship. Khuri then earned an MA at Central Saint Martins in Fine Arts in 2023, independently focusing on the written word and painting, again interning at Artforum, and publishing in ClassNotes magazine, while on an International Student Scholarship. After her MA, she is launching a magazine with a colleague, writing a novella entitled The Cafe and continuing to paint in a studio in east London.
Awards and exhibitions:
Nominated - Oustanding Student Contribution to Community, Arts Awards 2023
Instagram: @rayyakhuri
“"I am a painter. I am a writer. I am a storyteller. I am player of the game. I have spent years reading stories. How do I tell a good one? I transform what one could be.
In my work, I pursue truth, letter by letter and let the ink drip. I am an artist. No medium, no matter. Words will fill the gap. I will write with a voice whose sound never ends." ”
