... is a media artist
& graphic designer located in LA, CA.
She is pursuing her MFA in Media Art at UCLA Design|Media Arts (D|MA), and holds a previous MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and a B.Arts in Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and praxis centers upon Islamic mysticism, anti-colonial practice, resistance through radical reimaginings, and rethinking planetary and artificial intelligences.
Her first graduate thesis, Otherworldly Gestures, was completed at RISD in 2023, and is available to download ︎here.︎
Get in touch ︎sadia@sadia.space.
︎ Please reach out directly to request a hi-res copy.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice is a form of critical reflection on mystical practices, beliefs, and relationships threading between the cosmic spirit of all things, triangulating the human, more-than-human, and technological worlds. I seek to give form to the divine consciousness present in human relationships with nature and technology. Through the lens of eco-Sufism and techno-Mysticism, I subvert colonial and heteropatriarchal interpretations of Islamic practices, and riff on elements of ritual, sacred space, and divine communion to resist the exclusive, divisive, and hierarchical politics of our lived reality.
I do so by proposing a speculative faith framework that offers an alternative vision for how we can experience the divine. This framework is a woven structure, living and breathing, knotted, seeded, generative and tangled, a dis-Oriented network of re-wilded knowledge and lessons from multiple intelligences. Weaving abstraction, fragmentation, video and moving image, sculpture and installation to subvert borders and boundaries, I shape space into portals to Otherworld, a speculative utopic spirit realm, the connective tissue which binds all things. This practice is both worship and active resistance to the colonial, capitalist norms of the world in its present manifestation.
Journeying inward to connect outward, I take on the role of a spiritual teacher, a mystical guide, a techno-Sufi high priestess, to relay the teachings of this world. My practice considers a variety of texts including Elvia Wilk’s Death by Landscape, James Bridle’s Ways of Being, and Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism, as well as theories of post-humanism, cyber-feminism, Indigenous teachings, and my own spiritual journeys to produce a radical spiritual practice structured on co-creation with ancient future technologies, and planetary and artificial intelligence.
EXHIBITIONS & AWARDS:
UCLA GOP Fellowship—2023—2024
RISD MFA Graduate Show—June 2023