Syeda Aatika Fatima

Syeda Aatika Fatima, born in 1997, is a visual artist based in the United Kingdom. She completed her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art and is a recipient of the Paul Desty Scholarship. She had completed her BA in Fine Arts from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan and has since then moved permanently to England.

Most recently Aatika’s work has revolved around the theme of privacy, focusing especially on what privacy means to us as people existing in a rapidly evolving digital age. Through the use of varying perspectives and unusual shapes, Aatika explores this concept while imagining what a not so distant future could possibly look like.

Aatika’s artistic focus revolves around the themes of privacy and surveillance. She explores the ethical ambiguity associated with being able to look at people who are unaware that they are being watched in the current rapidly advancing digital era. Her process involves taking candid photographs of friends and family (with informed consent) and creating compilations. By painting figures in confusing, unstructured perspectives, often times in irregularly shaped panels, she attempts to create a narrative for the viewer to decipher of the characters portrayed in their personal spaces.

Aatika examines society and the current stance on people’s right to privacy. Many of her paintings include futuristic, dystopian scenes, in which she explores how this approach might develop, based on our current trajectory. In doing so, she also explores what it means to be human and the various factors that influence society’s approach to privacy, such as our longing for intimacy in a world full of accelerated technological advancement.