Ashley Khirea Wahba

Wahba traces the lineage of mimetic cultural production through her craft and art practices, writing and digital presence. Utilising iconography of mass culture alongside humorous and stereotypical imagery and phrases, she investigates the relationship between her personal values and those inherited from the outside.

Wahba insists absurdism and humour are coping mechanisms for feelings of futility within sociopolitical systems that often feel like they’re working against us. To her, humour, anger and protest are interlinked. Methods like alternative engraving appear as a form of antagonism towards both traditional and contemporary jewellery, just as internet memes become a democratic threat to the cultural relevance of the white cube gallery establishment.

Within her work, lines become blurred through tropes, clichés, irony, absurdism and sincerity, calling into question the politics of taste and the role of the authentic self in an algorithmic hyper-corporate age.