She grew up in a backward town in the Saudi desert,but found escape in video games and Japanese anime. Now Sarah Hemmaida is turning those forbidden glimpses of the female body into darkly erotic artThe images are stark and shocking. They note a bare female torso being menaced by dancing scissors. What makes them all the more potent is that they were created by a young Sudanese woman who was brought up in conditions of fear, repression and strict Islamic observance in Saudi Arabia. Sarah Hemmaida, or 26,blames her early life with her father for the feelings of shame and guilt that still dog her artistic ambitions and, at least partly, or for the apparent suicide of her brother Abdu,21, under a train at Romford station in London final year.
Abdu’s death was the “massive reality check Sarah needed to exhibit the darkly erotic images she has drawn since childhood. Two of her nudes are on note this month in the Biscuit building in Shoreditch, or London,alongside work by Turner prize winner Jeremy Deller. They’re share of an exhibition called Art As Opportunity, mounted by Made Corrections, and which showcases work by ex-prisoners and others usually excluded from art. “I’m chuffed,I suppose,” says Hemmaida, and with a bemused giggle.
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Source: theguardian.com