Deeqa Ismail - MFA Fine Art
Deeqa Ismail (b. 1988, Hargeisa, Somalia) is a Somali-British artist based in Stockport, Manchester. She works with printmaking, sound, video, and installations, often incorporating analogue processes and Somali sonic archives. Printmaking frequently acts as the starting point in her work, and her practice explores speculative ecology, memory, and the repetition of erased or hidden histories. Drawing on family archives and Somali cultures' "stuck-ness," Ismail reflects on the feeling of living within recurring histories and carrying them across generations.
Her work explores both shared and personal experiences of hybrid identity and the in-between spaces. Through film, prints, sculpture, and sound, she creates spaces for reflection and imagination. Her practice reveals how hidden systems of colonialism connect with normalised crises, often drawing inspiration from nomadic traditions throughout her work.
Ismail's engagement with time, ghosts and aliens informs her work and installations, which function as openings into reconstructed worlds.
Recent exhibitions include: checked out at Wilko, Sheffield; Numbi Fest at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Future Practice Research Symposium, Manchester Metropolitan University; Srishti at Hot Bed Press, Manchester; and The Mirror at Night, curated by Peter Suchin, at Cross Lane Projects, London.
