Zina Al-Shukri

"Coming Home To The Self"

Opening Reception with the Artist: Friday, June 9th 5-8pm

Zina Al-Shukri is an artist living in Arkansas. Her newest body of work is made through tapping into the unseen realm, a channeling of ancient knowledge and cosmic wisdom. She paints boldly, gently, and expressively through raw, psychic mediumship, calling on her ancestors and the divine source that is god Consciousness.

The exhibit is a departure from the emotive and psychologically complex portraiture that has been featured in New American Paintings and Open Space SFMOMA. In Coming Home To The Self, Al-Shukri has shifted the direction of her keen and sensitive gaze from the complex identity and experience of others, to that which she holds within. 

The 16 works in the show, all completed within the last year, explore the intimate spaces of the body, dreams, visions, and ancestry. Bold and immediate brushstrokes describe energetic relationships and psychological space through mystic symbols, fields of saturated color, and organic abstracted forms. Materially, the artist uses everything from oil on linen, spray paint, nupastel, acrylic, and gouache on different papers.

Zina Al-Shukri (b. 1978, Baghdad, Iraq) moved with her parents to the United States when she was 5 years of age. Al-Shukri received her BA from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and attended the California College of the Arts, receiving her MFA in 2009. Her work has been exhibited at Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, New American Paintings, and Open Space SFMOMA