Amirra Malak

Photo by Naseem Malak

    With an Egyptian father and a Caucasian American mother, Amirra Malak considers herself an “authentic hybrid” stretched between two contrasting cultures.  For most of her childhood, she lived in Kuwait and Egypt while she has lived in the Pacific Northwest of the United States for most of her adulthood.  The cultural contrasts in her upbringing have been paralleled by the environmental contrasts of these two parts of the world.  Growing up in monochromatic desert countries made the vibrant forests of the Northwest appear a living miracle to her.   The tension between this union of opposites is expressed in her painting through the juxtaposition of Middle-Eastern aesthetics with western painting qualities.       

     Amirra uses the visual signs of the sacred from Middle-Eastern culture in a new context to portray her reverence for the natural environment of the Pacific Northwest.  Arabic calligraphy, archways, and pattern share a space with painterly light and color reminiscent of western impressionist and fauve painting.  Subject matter includes leaves, plants and trees of this area with a color palette that mixes the intense sunlight and vibrant colors of the artwork of the Middle East with the more muted earth colors of the Pacific Northwest.

      In her process, she either begins with a direct experience of nature or a human experience that can be communicated through natural imagery.  She then chooses an appropriate color scheme to use while repeatedly painting Arabic calligraphy, much like repeating a mantra or meditation. The words become pure visual expression as the layering of color and text obscures the writing’s literal meaning.  For example, in many of her paintings, the text expresses the rhythm of the life force within nature.  The letters phonetically sound out a common Egyptian belly dance rhythm, but as the words are written and re-written, the visual quality of the writing becomes the drumbeat through vibrating color and the repetition of brushstrokes within the letters themselves.  In some pieces, she then contains the vibration of text within a natural form such as a leaf while in others the text serves to dissolve the edges of form by becoming the moving leaves of trees themselves.  By painting trees within leaves and leaves within trees, Amirra explores the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm and between the individual and the universal.  She believes human beings cannot separate themselves from nature and thus uses the Egyptian visual aesthetics of symmetry and centering of the composition to reflect the parallels between trees and human beings. Both stand on the earth with arms that can stretch skyward.  Both vibrate with life within.  Her hope is that these painted trees will serve as a reminder of humankind's interconnectedness to the natural world.