Fazil Maniar

Graduate Diploma 24/25

Masked of the socialised self — A central motif to the self portraits is the mask of my self, which represents the mask of the socialised self. This Idea was born from how I felt abandoned by my parents as they embarked on starting a business and were hardly around I created a mask of being a “good boy” to navigate the world, to seek love and belonging through conformity. This mask, is rendered in grey, deliberately as it diverges from the tone of my skin, symbolising the erasure of cultural identity I undertook in order to adhere to Britishness. It represents a survival strategy. The external locations in the work often bleak represent this reality.

No way back — My father’s laugh, childhood toys, family holidays these memories are locked in silence. What remains is a deep, embodied fear and an ongoing loss: I can’t remember my childhood. In No Way Back, I attempt to feel my way into the impossible nostalgia through the liminal space of a laser tag arena, one of the last places I still feel like a child. The walls display altered family photographs and unfamiliar images, creating a space of confusion and darkness, where the inner child hides. The final piece is a maquette: a fragmented laser tag maze, built from broken memories and disorientation.

The body in prayer — Islamic prayer, or Salaat, uses the body almost like an arabesque dancer, stretching toward the infinite. Each movement leaves a faint, ghostly mark an imprint of presence without ego, shaped by the body and fingerprints. Though these stains fade, they’re re-inscribed five times a day in quiet repetition. The root of Salaat means to link, to unite a ritual where body and mind disconnect from the everyday and reconnect with the divine. It becomes a threshold between the internal and external, a way to access the in-between space the transcendental, where time pauses and the self dissolves into something greater.

Breath of unity — In this body of work I made prints with my breath as I recited Quran. I was interested in exploring the breath as my father died from lung disease and his last few months just made me realise how something so ignored in our day to day is so vital.

About

I am a conceptual artist whose practice emerges from the unspoken pain of childhood and a lifelong sense of brokenness. After turning away from the arts in search of a “normal” life, witnessing the devastation in Palestine shattered that illusion calling me back to speak where my voice was needed. My work explores the tension between interior and exterior worlds, rooted in themes of grief, memory, identity, and cultural dislocation. Shaped by survival, I investigate the silent performances we adopt to feel safe. In these ruptures, I seek truth not normality and a space where pain can be held and transformed.

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