Layla Ali Amar she/they

I talk to myself through my art. I have difficulty understanding how I feel, so my art is a map allowing me to explore my emotions safely. I believe we live in a state of instantaneous repetition. Each version of myself is always alive in a moment of singularity. My art is a pathway that reaches through these isolated frames and creates a communicative vessel. My intense layering and movement of color is a reach into the subconscious and rarely involves an active assertion of myself. I bring back a magical, colorful sense of self by reaching into these intangible states.

Layla Amar (b.1998) is a self-taught Palestinian-American artist born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She creates pieces compiled with layers containing multiple mediums such as ink, pastel, and paint. Focusing on drawing and painting, she explores communication with the self immediately after extensive disassociated states. Time dictates her work in that it is ever-present, proving that every traumatic event is constantly alive and replaying within the self. Her work uses mark-making in the pictorial space to articulate experiences within the traumatized brain to resolve the inability to label intense sensations. Overall, her practice investigates the intersection between inherited trauma, her Palestinian ancestry, and lived experiences.