Aisha Rosli Singaporean, 1997

Born in Singapore, 1997, Aisha Rosli graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) with a Diploma in Fine Art (Western Painting) in 2018. She has had successful solo shows at Cuturi Gallery and was featured in several group exhibitions including OH! Open House in Singapore, Galerie LJ in Paris, Unit London in the UK, At The Table Group Show hosted by Christie’s and Harpers Gallery in New York, and most recently, ART SG in Singapore.

 

Referencing 20th century painters, Francis Bacon and Egon Schiele, as well as contemporaries such as Marlene Dumas, Rosli works within the tradition of figurative painting, driven by a mode of interrogation affixed to our bodily presence. Exploring themes of solitude, concealment, proximity, and desire, she presents figures inhabiting constructed scenes and situations that pander towards the uncanny. Rosli primarily works with acrylic and oil sticks, where her tendencies to layer and glaze her paintings comprise multiple iterations of concealing and revealing states of mind apropos one’s physicality. She is known for incorporating recognisable stylised patterns such as stripes, gingham, and lattice into her paintings, which serve as an important device for her to anchor the uncanny in and around her characters. To this end, Rosli’s figurative manifestations dwell in obscure environments that appear curiously familiar, yielding a certain enigmatic quality to unpacking her psychologically charged works.