Sahra Abdikarin

Sahra Abdikarin (°2000, Somalia) is a visual artist who is inspired by nature, children’s books and the observation of social interactions.

When Sahra had just arrived in Belgium and was still in high school, her social worker took her to Globe Aroma. There, she discovered painting and her talent for illustrating from the imagination.

Her paintings are cheerful and delicate, as well as numerous. In a short period of time, she has painted a considerable body of work, illustrating her love of the world and fulfilling her desire to create.

Due to a hearing impairment, Sahra is sometimes disoriented in her daily life, but she finds stability in her work. She transforms chaos into anecdotal visual stories. She encounters no resistance during the creative process. New images come as visions that she colourfully merges with the original subject. She departs from true experiences and adds something alien to them. Weird animals, for example, may emerge.

Sahra considers her working material as autonomous: paint and water are almost living primitive elements of magical proportions that she wants to admire every time (even when she washes the paint from a brush, for example).

She wants to illustrate children’s books. At Globe Aroma, she discovered a harmony through the creation of beings and worlds, and she hopes to translate this harmony into illustrated children’s books, uniting the differences between people.

This text was created during a conversation between Sahra Abdikarin and Timur Zakharchev, 2022.