Tomorrow 2021: Khushna Sulaman-Butt

My subjects are primarily an exploration of people from diverse backgrounds, with particular interest in the subversive exchange of power latent in gender, cultural expectation and stereotype. In An Adorned Woman (2020), a full-length portrait of a Muslim woman in modest clothing is adorned in extravagant jewellery. Another full-length portrait included here is Otamere (2021) — a young writer who has chosen to express himself in a bright red dress. Ascension (2020) is a painting about first encounters, which captures the first time that a group of scholarship winners from South Africa came together for a postgraduate programme in the UK.