Alya Hatta

It Was All Jello

Oil on canvas

“I paint people in the way that I do because people should just look however they want,” she explains, before adding: “Let me have all the lumps and bumps.” — Alya Hatta

About the artist

Alya Hatta

Alya Hatta (b.1999, Malaysia) is an interdisciplinary artist based in London and Kuala Lumpur. She graduated with a BFA from Goldsmiths, University of London before finding herself in the MA painting course at Royal College of Art. She has exhibited internationally in London, Milan, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Tübingen, and Sydney among others. She is a member of Unamed Collective and FloorFive collective, which are currently part of a year-long residency at Goldsmiths CCA.

Drawing on personal experiences and memories, Alya uses the dynamism of color, form, sound and space to explore the realm of digital and physical in representing her Southeast Asian identity, and to portray the colorful intimacies of the diasporic human condition. She takes inspiration from the communities of both her South London and Kuala Lumpur residences, as well as Southeast Asian mythology, to create alternate realities in an attempt to find new spaces in which she can call home.