ALYA HATTA

In this recent body of work, Hatta surveys lived experience of diaspora, with her Southeast Asian heritage conflated with Eastern and Western influences. Concerned with ecology, both environmental and communal, Hatta engages modes of journeying, discovering and crafting to imagine a materialized paradise which she can call her own.

The gathering of materials and textiles are the scaffolding that lays the base for this world to be built upon. The pattern motifs and swatches of textured textiles that bleed into Hatta’s paintings are grown through exchange with her immediate community. Central in the exhibition exists a sculpture; a hybridised palm tree whose trunk is formed of recycled batik, and whose leaves are block printed from ones existing in Kuala Lumpur and in London. This sculpture not only anchors the exhibition physically but also metaphorically, representing the roots and branches of a community and heritage intertwining to create something new and vibrant. Strings of seeping pearls, tangled beads and chains are collected from the community around her - Bob’s Bikes, Honey Gold Fabrics and Aunty Amy Woh’s off-cuts, all quintessential South East London boutiques.

They are collages of life that bypass time, space and generational experiences to form their own spaces which culminate into her sense of self. Little to no importance is placed on differentiating between the forms of painting, drawing and sculpture which emerge from this searching, but rather the artist is focused on the action of making and assembling itself, using materiality to form a language that speaks for the self as an individual as well as a collective identity.