London-based artist Pippa El-Kadhi Brown (b. 1996) is the current Freelands Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University. She graduated from Royal College of Art in 2022, where she studied MA Painting under The Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award. She studied BA Painting at The University of Brighton, School of Art, where she graduated in 2018.
In her work, Pippa explores the enigmatic dialogue between domestic space, consciousness, and the human psyche. In her paintings, she playfully disembowels the anatomy of the domestic environment, gutting from the inside out. In a combination of the imagined, foreign, and familiar, Pippa plucks out miscellaneous objects, furniture, and houseplants, and homes them together under one living, breathing, (dys)functional roof.
Her paintings are inhabited with curious household spirits; anthropomorphic figures that brush through space and dissolve into furniture. Her work is influenced by vast varying themes such as phenomenology, abjection, and consciousness, combined with the idea of compressed realities found in kitsch 1950’s cartoon backdrops. Her paintings of inner worlds are not physical but emotional, manifested through depth and sensation, reflected in us all as domesticated beings.
Pippa's recent solo shows include: Vista, at LAMB Gallery in London (2023), Walls Who Whisper at Lychee One in London (2023), Where the Dust Settles at CBU Gallery in Taipei (2022), Around You, Within You, or Nowhere at All at Ashurst, London (2020), and House Plants, Creekside Projects, London (2019). Her work has recently been shown in The Way of All Flesh, Saatchi Gallery, London, and Sympoiesis, Gallery Kabinett, Seoul.
She has received Freelands Studio Fellowship 2024, The Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award 2020, The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2020, The Art Pegazs Taste of Life Award 2019 and The Creekside Graduate Award 2019. She has taken part in Organhaus Studio Residency in Chongqing, China (2019), Creekside Studio Residency, London (2019) and has been invited to an upcoming residency with Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy.