I was brought up across two cultures, a strict Islamic one and a Western British colonial one – an Egyptian father, a British mother, a childhood in Nigeria, a Catholic Missionary school, teenage years wearing the veil in Saudi Arabia. As a hybrid of these cultures and faiths, and as a kind of aftermath of colonialism, my internal struggles to forge stable identities led me to seek out a personal body vocabulary. I am drawn to hybrid, ‘grotesque’ and ornamental forms.