Raised in a home built atop the remnants of an ancient Sumerian burial site, Zayn Qahtani has always been acquainted with death. “I’m a graveyard girl,” she professes as we sit in her London studio, explaining that the singularity of her homestead meant constantly learning about ancient burial rituals, about how the Sumerians would have dinner with their deceased one last time, together with their close family and friends. “It just made death seem like so much of a scary thing, like it’s part of your routine… Maybe that’s why my life has a lot to do with death, grief, rebirth, because I relate to that wanting to make death casual.”
Qahtani’s artwork has come to gloat of this proximity; always tangled up in grief, but never burdened by it. Only marked by a knowing detachment. She handles her art—intricate drawings enshrined in sculptural framings—with the same distance, despite how intimately autobiographical they all are. Qahtani is gripped by the process of creation alone, of excavating the secrets of her subconscious through her work; once her pieces are complete, she is easy to part with them. For someone so naturally warm, the artist has an openly dark, almost morbid streak to her words, which suggests a life thoroughly lived. “I have no attachment to anything,” she admits. “The catharsis, the release, happens when I’m making it. I don’t have to think twice. The process was done for me, so you get to keep the final piece.”
