Alymamah Rashed is a Kuwaiti visual artist who investigates the discourse of her own body as a Muslima Cyborg, fluctuating between the east and the west. The Muslima Cyborg rests in a liminal spectacle that compartmentalizes the collective tangibility of the mind, the body, and the ornament.

Alymamah received her BFA in Fine Arts at The School of Visual Arts, New York, NY in 2016. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design and is expected to graduate during May 2019. She participated in various exhibitions in New York City including the Czech Center, Parsol Projects, and The New School. She is a recipient of the Masters Scholarship and the Merit Scholarship program by the Kuwait Ministry of Higher Education. She was also a fellow at the Professional Development Initiative Program sponsored by the National U.S-Arab Chamber of Commerce, Kuwait Ministry of Higher Education, Embassy of Kuwait, and the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences.

The Muslima Cyborg body/Al-Jism/ (جسم) conceptually exists within the spatiality of anti-self orientalization, chromophobia, and in between internationalization and self localization. Muslima Cyborg is not a terminology. It is a self preserved social identity. The Muslima Cyborg is then established through three physical presences: the naked body, the thob, and the combination of the two.

 A thob is a prayer garment a Muslim woman wears during prayer where only her face and hands are exposed. The thob fabric is usually an airy cotton fabric that is coated with a single block of color and a delicate pattern of florals. The naked body is the revealed body rather than the unclothed body. The combination of my thob and naked body is what I embed on canvas.

 The Muslima Cyborg is constructed through thick layers of paint. It lives on a 38 x 83 inches’ cotton canvas and extends itself onto the surrounding walls and floor. The Musilma Cyborg’s palette is non-chromophobic. It embraces the history of the handmade and the decorative in the east and rejects the politics of the white cube. The Muslima Cyborg acknowledges the censored coexistence of a contemporary Muslima woman’s bodily experience.

The Muslima cyborg reveals its markings of self-violence. The deep cadmium red and alizarin blue scars are resulted by the artist’s past struggle to accept their body. The indication of light and leakage celebrates a repeating survival from Islamophobia. Yet, the leakage of the fleshed gestures reveals the struggle to accept liminality.

The Muslima Cyborg body/Al-Jism/ (جسم) does not exoticize or self-orientalize itself. The Muslima Cyborg does not caress the commodification of symbols, monuments, and ornaments. The Muslima Cyborg exists within it’s boundary. The Muslima Cyborg transcends territory through it’s urgency to decontextualize cultural traditions that have been mistaken for religious acquirements.