Today we’d like to introduce you to Lana Sheikha.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am a self-taught mixed-media artist who currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was born in West Asia and came to the United States as a child, where I bounced around all over the South. I joke that I grew up in a “sample platter of the South”, calling many states home, including Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, and North Carolina.
Ever since I could pick up a pencil, I’ve been drawing. Art became the sole oasis of stability in my life. It was always there, and it never required much to practice. I’d draw on napkins, receipts, my homework (my teachers weren’t too fond of that), paper tablecloths at restaurants, pretty much any surface I could get my hands on, with any pen, pencil, or crayon that was around. Art is my first love, and it’s what helped me make sense of what I was experiencing in all the different seasons of life.
Currently, I live in NoDa, Charlotte’s arts district, where I’m active in my community and the local art scene. My style uses organic shapes and reflects on themes of freedom, femininity, and balance. I’ve been fortunate to have my work featured in The Bohemian Wine Bar, the Gallery at Morning Star, Charlotte Studio Artists, and Free Range Brewing.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Absolutely not. “Smooth” is the opposite of how I’d describe my journey. I am a Muslim Iraqi Kurd who was living in Mississippi during 9/11. The years that followed were brutal. Being confronted with so much hatred at such a young age was confusing and scary. I didn’t understand how I had somehow become a target of America’s complicated history and foreign policy, but there I was, caught in the crosshairs while trying to pass my classes with a decent grade.
That said, I was also immensely privileged. I had access to opportunities that many of my family members back home didn’t. At the time, my mom, my siblings, and I were the only ones in our family living in America. The quantum leap in our quality of life and access to opportunity couldn’t be overstated. We had electricity and hot running water 24/7. We could drive to a massive grocery store and find anything we needed. We had safety, stability, and opportunities that weren’t available to everyone in my family back home. That privilege came with its own complicated feeling of survivor’s guilt. Why should I get to have all of this when I had family members struggling back home? Family members that were way smarter and more dedicated than me. Why did I get this chance at a different life simply because of where I happened to be?
Being caught between two cultures only reinforced art as a form of healing for me. It gave me somewhere to put feelings I didn’t yet have the words, or even the understanding, to explain. In many ways, it became my guiding light. I’d look at a drawing I was working on and think “ohhhh, THAT’s what I’m feeling!” It gave me a way to express the complexity of what I was experiencing, long before I fully understood the forces that had created it.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My work is colorful, fluid, a little strange, and always evolving. I’m a self-taught mixed-media artist, and I work across acrylic, ink, charcoal, collage, and digital mediums. I love organic shapes and jokingly describe my style as “gender-fluid lava lamp”, made of figures and forms that are liberated, free, and balanced. I’m interested in the spaces between masculine and feminine, softness and strength, chaos and order.
Being self-taught has also had a huge influence on my process. I never learned that there was a “right” way to make art, so create out of curiosity and intuition rather than rules. There’s a freedom in not being overly concerned with whether something fits neatly into a certain artistic tradition or category.
What I’m most proud of is that I’ve built an artistic practice that feels authentically mine. I didn’t go to art school, grow up surrounded by artists, or have a roadmap for becoming an artist. I just kept making things because it felt right. After years of keeping my work private, it’s incredibly meaningful to now have my work out in the world and to see it connect with other people. I think what sets me apart is that my work is deeply personal without being prescriptive. My experiences growing up between cultures, moving frequently, and constantly navigating questions of identity all show up on the canvas. But I don’t need someone to know my story to connect with a piece. I want the work to leave enough room for them to find themselves in it, too.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
I moved to Mississippi when I was about seven years old. It wasn’t common for a family like mine to move into the town where we lived, so the mayor noticed us pretty quickly. She was very kind to our family, and when my parents told her that I was interested in art, she arranged for me to take classes from a local artist.
The artist was legally blind. She could only see about six inches in front of her face and wasn’t able to drive, but she created these incredible, large-scale paintings. She taught out of an old historic building that must have been at least 100 years old. Her classes were on the first floor, and her studio was upstairs. I remember getting to tour her studio and seeing this massive painting of a white tiger with bright blue eyes. I was small at that time, so the painting felt like it reached all the way to the ceiling. It probably wasn’t actually that huge, but to me it was enormous.
Over the next several weeks, she taught me and a few other kids after school, covering art fundamentals that helped me get the basics down. More than anything though, I remember how dedicated she was to her craft. Being legally blind didn’t stop her from being an artist. It just meant she had to experience and practice her art differently. It was the first time I saw firsthand that there isn’t just one way to be an artist. As an artist, you define what being an artist looks like in your life. Her impact stays with me til this day.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.art.sheikha
