About 

As a 24 year old Palestinian American, my work heavily revolves around my background and personal experiences. My creative practice has primarily been shaped by my culture, as well as my journey with mental and physical illness. My cultural background and my illness strangely played similar roles in my lives, as I was always very sheltered and overprotected as a result of both of those things, making it difficult for me to experience the real world in the same way that my peers did. I was often not allowed to do the same things that other people my age did, like going to parties, having sleepovers, dating, etc. Because of this introversion, much of my time was spent in digital spaces, where I found a comfortable way to socialize and express myself.

I became very adept with technology, and began teaching myself to digitally edit and draw. I began using my love for gaming as inspiration for a lot of my work. Through my video game inspired works, I began to focus on the way that the avatars we customize within video games can serve as an idealized version of ourselves.

The internet gives us a power that the real world does not, which is the ability to nitpick what parts of ourselves we present to others, and to live a version of ourselves that perhaps we wouldn’t be able to explore in the real world. My goal is to explore this idea of identity, more specifically the way in which we choose to present ourselves to the outside world.