The Art Born From Healing. Interview With Faissal El-Malak

by Alexandra Mansilla

The Art Born From Healing. Interview With Faissal El-Malak

26 Jun 2025

Photo: Carmen Gray

Imagine stepping into a bright yellow room, where white lines on the walls seem to visually stretch the space, making the room feel larger, more dynamic, and just a little bit surreal. All around you are bold, colourful paintings in different sizes. Some feature lizards, others show a crocodile, almost every piece has human silhouettes, and one artwork is even partially made from carpet. It is an explosion of colour, right? This is the graduation project by Faissal El-Malak, a Palestinian artist and designer, which won him the Warden’s Prize. And, from my point of view, it is one of Faissal’s most striking bodies of work.

As I took in all these works, I found myself full of questions. Why did he choose to do things this way? What is the story behind all the lizards?

And I was curious about Faissal’s journey, too, because he is not just an artist, but also a healer. How do those two worlds come together? He started out in fashion, but eventually closed his brand — why? How did he go from there to designing window displays for Hermès? And what is he working on these days?

— So, Faissal, you are a Palestinian artist based between London and Dubai. Can you tell me a bit more about your roots, your parents, and how you ended up living between these two cities?

— Sure! I am Palestinian — both of my parents are as well. My father’s family is from Haifa, in the north, and both of my parents became refugees in 1948. My dad was born in Palestine, and my mom was born a couple of years later in Jordan. They both grew up in Lebanon, and eventually, our family ended up moving around quite a bit.

My father received a grant to study in Egypt — I am not sure exactly who awarded it, but back then, a few Palestinians were given such opportunities. After he finished his studies and returned to Lebanon, he got a chance to move to Qatar in the 1960s. That is when Qatar became our family base. My uncles, aunts, and grandmother all relocated there, and Qatar was home for us from the mid-60s until more recently.

— Was it obvious even back in your school years that you would go into fashion and art? Or how did that path unfold for you?

— I have always loved clothes and truly believe in the power they have. As a teenager, I realised how clothes could be so powerful — it is something that really stuck with me, and I wanted to be part of that world. So when it came time to choose what to study at university, I kept coming back to the idea of fashion design.

But honestly, I never thought it was something I could actually do. I was a good student, I had good grades, and I knew I could choose a more conventional path. For a while, I even considered becoming a doctor — I loved biology, and my parents were absolutely thrilled about the idea. They were like, "Wow, amazing!" But in the end, I realised it just wasn’t what I wanted.

Eventually, I had to break the news to my parents, and it definitely wasn’t easy. I really had to stand my ground, argue my case, and try to convince them, because at first, they were totally against it. They just didn’t see fashion as a “real” career. It was definitely a challenge.

Photo: Carmen Gray

— And you launched your brand in 2011, but then decided to leave it behind. Why? What happened?

— Pretty quickly, I realised that the reality of the fashion business wasn’t what I had imagined. In big companies, someone tells you, “Okay, this season we need this many pairs of pants, this many skirts, this many jackets…” and as a designer, you are just plugging into that system.

But when you are doing it on your own, it is completely different. For me, it was really tough to keep up the drive to sell. I just didn’t care about the business side — selling wasn’t my dream. I never wanted to build a multinational brand or focus on numbers. I think I approached it more as an artist than as a businessperson, and in the end, that just didn’t work. It wasn’t a good match for me.

I found myself in a situation where I thought I knew what I wanted, but the reality just didn’t fit.

— Now you are both an artist and a healer. Interesting journey! When did you discover you wanted to become a healer?

— One day, I just started getting interested in more alternative things through friends and people I met there. For example, I first tried hypnotherapy to quit smoking. That experience really opened my eyes and made me curious: “What is this? How does it work?”

Later on, in Dubai, I met a yoga teacher and we got to talking. She told me she practised something called “assisted meditation.” At first, I didn’t really know what it was, but a month or two later, I decided, why not give it a try? And honestly, it was a magical experience for me — I really felt something shift.

Fast forward a few months, and I met another healer who practised the same technique (Thetahealing). He told me he was offering classes and asked if I wanted to join. At first, I said no — I was happy just being a client. But a few months later, he asked again, and this time I decided to go for it. I took the first class and was absolutely blown away. After that, I ended up taking most of the courses back to back with him, and a few others as well. Eventually, I started practising, and it has become an important part of my life.

— Is there something specific that you discovered about yourself through this practice?

— Yes! What I discovered is that intuition isn’t just some mysterious gift you either have or you don’t. Of course, some people might be a bit more intuitive than others, but as I went through these classes and worked on myself, I realised it is actually something you can train. We are all intuitive by nature — we just tend to block it out over time because of social conventions, daily life, and all sorts of other things.

But once you start to open up and work through those blocks, you realise we are all connected. Everyone experiences those little “coincidences” — like thinking of someone and suddenly getting a message from them, or bumping into a friend you were just thinking about. That is intuition, and it is real. The key is learning how to tune into it and expand it, so it becomes something you can actually use in your life.

It is not impossible at all — it is just a skill, like anything else.

Photo: Fergus Carmichael

— Now, let’s talk about your Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art degree show in 2023, where you won the Warden’s Prize. Why did you choose yellow as the main colour for these works? And why did you put the horizon this way?

— For me, yellow has always felt like a magical colour. I remember when I was in Canada, every week in Moral Sciences, our teacher would read us a story about someone who changed the world — a figure like Marie Curie, for example. I have this vivid memory of one particular winter: it was the dead of winter, those short, grey days that can feel pretty depressing. On one especially gloomy day, our teacher started the class by talking about summer, warmth, and light. That memory of yellow — that sunny, solar colour — stuck with me, and it is something that keeps coming back in my work.

For me, yellow is all about healing. In my art, it often represents those moments when everything aligns, when something just “clicks” inside you.

The perspective in the work is meant to echo this feeling — the horizon line is intentionally set a bit above the floor, making the whole space feel disorienting. It is both overwhelming and attractive at the same time. It is embracing, while destabilising. And that is exactly what a healing session feels like — at first, you always feel a bit destabilised.

Photo: Fergus Carmichael

— Okay, now tell me — what is the deal with the lizard?

— Bringing my healing practice into my artwork has become a big theme for me. Over time, I realised I could actually do this — I could find ways to use images and impressions that come up during healing sessions with my clients. A lot of these images are so surreal. For example, one of my works started with a dream I had: I saw a lizard next to its blood blob version. As soon as I woke up, I wrote it down, and later that day, I went to the studio and sketched it from memory. That sketch became a painting.

This process really mirrors the way a healing session unfolds: you start with something and let it guide you, seeing where it leads, branching out as you go. That is exactly what happened with this dream — I drew it, painted it, and then thought, "What if I take this further and embody it?" I started imagining a whole scene, and a performance based on the symbols from my dream.

Photo: Fergus Carmichael

One symbol that stuck with me was a lizard with a black and green pattern — in the dream, it was almost jelly-like, and it was being offered to someone. I started wondering, "Does this lizard actually exist?" So I Googled it, and while I didn’t find a lizard like that, I found a frog from Central America — the black and green dart frog, which has a very similar pattern. The interesting thing is, this frog is poisonous in the wild, but when it is kept in captivity and its diet and environment change, it loses its poison and its ability to protect itself.

Photo: Fergus Carmichael

That discovery really struck me. It made me think of Palestine, and especially the old Palestinian folk song Zareef Al Toul. The song is about not leaving your home because you are loved and safe there, but if you leave, who knows what will happen to you — maybe you will fall in love, settle somewhere else, and never come back. That dream, that frog, and the story behind it all seemed connected. It became a metaphor in my mind about belonging, home, and what we lose or gain when we move away from our roots.

So, that dream turned into a sketch, then a painting, then a textile work, and finally, I made a video piece around it. Each step was about following the thread, seeing where the images would take me, just like in a healing session.

Photo: Fergus Carmichael

— I also noticed that the frames of some of your artworks are works of art themselves.

— I wanted to use that trope — the idea of windows, of looking into something — in my work. It is very much connected to the idea of a healing session, too. In a way, when you decide to show up and do the work, you are actually creating a context — building a kind of window through which you see yourself or your experience differently. Then you step into that window, or frame, and things start to shift.

So, the frame is a really important part of my work — and I don’t just mean the literal frame around a picture. To me, the space itself becomes part of the frame. The environment you experience the art in shapes the way you see it, almost like it sets the boundaries or the rules for how the work is understood. Whether it is an actual frame or just the architecture of the space around the art, it all plays a role in how the viewer engages with what they are seeing.

Photo: Fergus Carmichael

— While we are talking, I can see the artwork behind you — which is also part of your graduation exhibition. Is there something special about this particular piece for you?

— I recently read a 12th-century philosophical novel called Hay Ibn Yaqzan. It was translated (from Arabic) into German in the 1700s and then into English soon after, becoming a really influential text among European philosophers of that era.

What fascinated me most was the story itself: it is about a little boy who grows up completely isolated from other humans and is adopted by a deer who becomes his mother. When she dies, he goes on this mission to understand why she died. He ends up dissecting her body and eventually reaches her heart. There is a moment in the novel — which I based my illustration on, using an etching from the 1700 English translation — where he realises: the heart is hidden deep within the ribcage, surrounded by so many protective layers. He doesn’t know all the anatomy, but he senses that if it is protected by so much, it must be the most important organ. It is this big realisation: after so much searching, he finally finds what he has been looking for.

For me, that moment felt like a metaphor for the healing process. In a healing session, there is often this point where things suddenly click, where you reach a memory or a realisation, and it all just makes sense. That feeling is so powerful, and I wanted to capture that in my work. This illustration is my way of showing that moment of discovery, when you finally reach the heart of the matter.

Photo: Fergus Carmichael

— The presence of the sun on this artwork is so strong.

— The squiggly lines in the work actually came to me during meditation — they are shapes I saw while in that state. The sun wasn’t part of the original vision; I added it later. But those wave-like lines and the image behind the glass were both inspired by what I experienced in meditation.

I also wanted to connect all of this to the space itself and to the idea of perspective. That is why I included the element where the text appears, kind of like the opening credits in Star Wars — the words seem to recede into space. There is something cosmic about it: stars, spaceships, and even the “stars” or “spaces” in your own mind. All these elements tie back to the feeling of exploring inner worlds and new perspectives.

— In 2024, you also collaborated with Hermès on their window displays in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi. Could you tell me more about it?

— Yes, it was actually super fun!

Hermès wanted to collaborate with local designers for these window displays. I sent them my portfolio, and that is how I got my first two projects: the first was the Bahrain window — a special artist window for the opening of a new store in May 2024. Then, a couple of months later, I got to do a window for their Abu Dhabi store as well. Now, I have a couple more projects coming up in Abu Dhabi — those windows will be installed and unveiled soon.

Honestly, I really enjoyed the whole process. For me, it was the perfect balance — it gave me a chance to apply my artistic approach to something functional and public, which was a really cool experience.

“Express Celestial Postal Service”, the window for the Hermès store in Abu Dhabi. Instagram: @faissalelmalak

— The window in Bahrain was called “When the Guard Crosses the Street at Dusk,” and in Abu Dhabi, “Express Celestial Postal Service.” I would love to hear more about the concepts behind these displays!

— For context, Hermès always has an annual theme, and the theme for the two windows I created last year was their 100th anniversary for their flagship store, Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. The brief was to treat the shop as a surreal space, a place where magical things can happen. They wanted us to blend the shop’s visual identity with surrealist ideas.

I started by researching the store and came across images of the mounted police in Paris — those officers on horseback, sometimes seen outside the store. I wanted to capture that magical nighttime feeling where something unexpected happens, so I imagined the horse transforming into a ribbon, inspired in part by the surrealist artist M.C. Escher, the Dutch graphic artist famous for those impossible staircases and ribbon-like figures. The bannister in the window display was based on the shop’s actual balustrade, and I added the pedestrian zebra crossing from outside the store, with Hermès products travelling up and down into portals.

“When the Guard Crosses the Street at Dusk”, the window for the Hermès store in Bahrain. Instagram: @faissalelmalak

For the other window, I focused on the shop’s façade — I imagined clouds sweeping it away, while storks grabbed pieces of the façade that transformed into magical eggs, and from those eggs, Hermès bags would emerge.

Honestly, it is such a fun job, and I really enjoy it. Hermès encourages you to be as creative as possible — it is a rare kind of freedom for an artist.

This experience really changed my perspective. Hermès gives you a theme, but it is so open-ended — you can interpret it however you want. When I first presented more conventional ideas, they actually encouraged me to push further, to go bigger, wilder, and more creative. That kind of support — believing in my vision and challenging me to go all in — was really special and honestly made the whole process even more inspiring.

Photo: Carmen Gray

— So now you are working on new windows for Hermès, but I am sure you have got other projects on the go as well. What else are you working on right now?

— Right now, I am working on a series of photopolymer etchings for an upcoming show called “The Lost Paintings.” The exhibition is curated by three curators and is centred around a painter named Maroun Tomb. He was a Palestinian-Lebanese artist based in Haifa before 1948. In 1948, during the Nakba, he fled to Lebanon.

Just before the Nakba, in 1947, Maroun Tomb had a show in Haifa. He wrote a letter to a friend — also from Haifa but living in Paris at the time — letting him know about the exhibition. Along with the letter, he sent a catalogue listing the titles of 53 paintings that were shown. After 1948, all of the paintings were lost. The only things that survived were this catalogue and the letter, which his friend had kept safe.

For the exhibition, the curators invited 53 Palestinian artists to respond to the catalogue by choosing a title and creating a new work inspired by it. Through this commission, I started exploring my own family history in Haifa, especially the story of my great-grandfather. During the process, I connected with a historian who is an expert on Haifa’s pre-1948 history. I emailed him, mentioned my great-grandfather’s name, and explained that he owned buildings in a certain area. Amazingly, the historian replied immediately, saying he knew exactly where the buildings were and gave me the address.

I found the buildings on Google Maps and showed them to my aunt, who was a teenager when the family left Haifa in 1948 — she recognised them right away. That moment was really magical for us. I also spent time in newspaper archives, reading Arabic, English, and Hebrew newspapers from the 1930s. I learned that my great-grandfather was shot in the street in 1936 because he was involved in the strike movement, protesting British rule and rising Zionist immigration. He was one of the leaders of the movement in the city, and seeing all those articles about him made everything feel even more real.

So, for this show, I am creating a series of photopolymer etchings that feature the houses I found and some of those newspaper clippings. The exhibition opens at the end of August or the beginning of September in Montreal, then will travel to Boston, Belfast, Bristol, London, and possibly more cities after that.

by Alexandra Mansilla