thantreyarts

Yasmeen Fathima Thantrey (she/her/they) is an artist living and working in London. Currently studying MA Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art, her practice explores diaspora, identity, and barriers she has encountered growing up in the UK.  Feminist issues such as body hair and diet culture are also challenged through the eyes of a brown girl. Their work is interdisciplinary, often using mediums that feel appropriate to the topics she is exploring. This ranges from photography, text, performance and film, to installations and soft sculptures.

"Often I feel  huge tension between the intersections of my identity, rarely finding spaces that can nurture me as a whole. I try to explore these tensions within my practice, aiming to find the sweet spot that can give voice my experiences with disability, class, gender/queerness, and race as a Pakistani Punjabi woman. Communities and socially engaged practices play a big role in creating works that can speak to a shared experience."

Thantrey’s work has a strong collaborative element, as the issues she takes on are socio-political, and therefore, community is extremely significant for the work she produces. This makes her work fall somewhere within the art activism and performance intersection, as audience response and gaze is crucial to the narrative. She aims to play and dismantle power structures through humorous loaded work, that purposefully interrupts a white cube and institutional environment.

Their work thrives within social media spaces, to generate discourse and open safe spaces for discussion. Often looking back to early 2010's toxic internet culture as a catalyst for internal biases, reclaiming social media in this way acts as a healing process to be shared with others in the generation.