Maysaloun Faraj

Maysaloun Faraj was born in Los Angeles California (1955) to Iraqi parents.  She moved to Iraq in 1968, graduated with a BSc in Architecture (Baghdad University 1978) and in 1982 went to live in London with her husband the architect Ali Mousawi.  She soon relocated to Paris with her young family and after two years returned to London, furthering her art education, where she continues to live today.   She works in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, ceramics and sculpture.  Amid an aesthetic informed by architectural discipline is a complex web of references, bridging east and west, ancient and contemporary.  Her quest for order and harmony and long-standing fascination with colour and basic geometric form, led to years of relentless experimentation with varied artistic styles rooted in universal themes such as love, homeland, the joys and struggles of living, humanity, compassion, spirituality and the transience of human existence. In 2015/17/18 Faraj went to Paris as a resident of the Cité Internationale des Arts. This period evoked renewed interest in geometric abstraction which instigated a series of paintings ‘in conversation’ with Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Sonia Delaunay and Josef Albers.  It was time in confinement during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020-22 however, that would bring her back to depicting the world subjectively, triggering a profoundly influential oeuvre simply by repeatedly drawing her HOME, and with this also exploring the notion of HOME and its wider implications.   Her work is held in prestigious international public and private collections world-wide.  Maysaloun Faraj lives and works in London. @maysalounfaraj