The art I connect to most is the kind that reaches the very core of the artist — that opens like a book and allows you to read it to the very last page without skipping a word. It is honest. Sometimes vulnerable. At times even draining — yet relieving all the same.

Speaking with Miramar, the Iraqi multidisciplinary artist, I felt this is exactly how she creates. There is no distance between the person and the practice. She opens herself fully and gives everything — emotionally and physically. She heals and dreams through her art, yet she doesn’t keep that process private. Instead, she offers it outwardly, as a channel for light to pass through material form as purely as possible, so that others may heal and dream alongside her.

Her path feels just as sincere. Being self-taught seems almost necessary — as though any imposed structure might have limited that raw honesty. She works with complete immersion, often forgetting food, water, even sleep. Deeply connected to nature, to Iraq, to Jordan, and to her family — who first introduced her to art — she carries all of it into her practice.

This is simply who she is — and that makes her story open, generous, and true.

— You are a self-taught artist. How did your journey into art begin, and when did you realise you wanted to pursue it professionally?

— It began very organically — and quite unpredictably.

Both of my parents are artists. They left Iraq during the war and moved to Jordan before I was born. My mother stopped producing art when she had us, so I didn’t grow up watching her practise. My father, on the other hand, was an incredibly gifted artist, but he chose a commercial path to support the family. I could see the strength in his earlier works — the freshness of his strokes — and part of me always wished he had been able to follow that path fully.

Interestingly, both of my parents discouraged us from becoming artists. For them, it had been a difficult and exhausting life. So I never consciously chose this path. In fact, I imagined myself doing something entirely different.

But art kept finding me.

At school, around grade 8 or 9, I painted my first monochrome watercolour in ultramarine blue. I remember feeling completely drawn into that world. Later, when my father moved his studio into our flat in Amman, I would quietly experiment with his brushes and canvases. Even then, I didn’t think I would become an artist — it simply felt natural to be around it.

After school, I tried studying animation, but the educational system never felt aligned with me. I dropped out twice. Eventually, I stopped trying to force a structured direction and allowed life to unfold. Looking back, the journey feels gradual: from sketches to canvases, and from canvases to walls.

The transition to street art happened for two main reasons.

The first was scale. I had a lot of energy to express, and the canvas began to feel too small. I wanted to move my entire body while painting — to stretch, to step back, to reach, almost to fly. Street walls allowed that expansion.

The second was accessibility. As a teenager, I once told my father that I wanted to hold a solo exhibition. He took me to one of the most prestigious art institutions in Jordan. I walked in confidently and asked for a show. They were polite and respectful, but I could sense the hesitation. I understand it now — it was a space for established artists.

But I left with something very clear: I needed a space without barriers. The street became that space. It gave me scale, freedom and direct access to people — without gatekeepers.

In the end, it wasn’t a strategic decision. It was a necessity. A need to express, to move, to be seen without limitation. I was — and still am — highly sensitive, very emotional. Painting became the language through which all of that could move.

— Your father seems to have played a profound role in your journey, didn’t he?

— He truly did. He was my introduction to art.

He passed away three years ago, and I still feel his presence very strongly. Just recently, I dreamt about the first art book I ever read — a book he brought home, filled with Renaissance depictions of angels and biblical scenes. As a child, I would browse through it endlessly. In the dream, the creatures were different — unfamiliar — but the feeling was the same. It was beautiful.

He planted that seed in me.

— Your exhibition Moving Through the Ether was created while you were grieving your father. What did that body of work represent?

— It was created during one of the most intense periods of my life. That intensity became a release — a way of letting out what had been held inside for too long. I was grieving my father, and I was creating in his honour.

The works resemble flowers — almost floral beings — yet I wasn’t painting flowers in a literal sense. Movement has always been at the core of my practice. I record my gestures directly onto the canvas, and over time those gestures evolve into form.

During that period, my movement changed. I was swirling. Expanding. Flowering. Not depicting flowers, but embodying flowering as a principle. I worked obsessively, and through that swirling motion I felt I was reaching somewhere beyond myself — as though I were connecting to wherever my father is now. As long as I was “flowering”, I felt close to him, almost in his presence.

I set myself the intention of drawing one thousand flowers for him. I am still counting.

— Why one thousand?

— I have always had a tendency to do things in excess — not consciously, it is simply how I am made. If I cook for myself, I somehow end up cooking for ten. When I order something, I order more than I need. Even in the studio — with paint, with canvas — there is always more than planned: extra colour in the corner, extra layers on the surface.

So choosing one thousand felt instinctive. It wasn’t carefully calculated or loaded with strict symbolism. It came from that same impulse — to give more than necessary. Perhaps it is exaggeration. Or perhaps it is generosity. I am not entirely sure.

— What has lack of a formal art education given you?

— It gave me freedom — and a deep trust in my own method.

Every time I tried to enter a formal structure, I felt tension. Not because the structure was wrong, but because it wasn’t mine. I have always listened to myself more than to external systems. For me, technique has to emerge from within. It reflects how you think and how you feel; it is inseparable from the concept you are trying to express.

If I were to fully adopt someone else’s method, I would feel as though I were reshaping myself into something that didn’t originate from me.

At the time, the rejections were painful. I kept questioning why doors were closing. But now I see that life was gently guiding me back to myself. I already had what I needed — I simply needed patience, time and solitude to let it surface.

In that sense, I am grateful I didn’t follow a formal path. And honestly, even if I had, I think I would have had to dismantle it in order to find myself again.

— Do you feel a connection to Iraq, and does it appear in your work?

— Yes, very deeply — but not in a literal way.

I have visited Iraq twice, and each time was deeply emotional. It is a land layered with history, and I believe that anyone who carries Iraqi blood feels that connection, even from afar.

In my work, however, the connection is spiritual rather than symbolic.

For example, when I speak about the desert in Jordan, it isn’t about Jordan as a country, or about nationality or borders. The desert is a phenomenon. Once you enter it, something shifts. The body softens. The mind opens. Time expands. In that vastness, I often feel closer to something ancient within me — something that stretches far beyond my personal story.

That is where Iraq lives in my work: as a quiet undercurrent. As memory, lineage and a spiritual thread, rather than a direct narrative.

— Your work is often associated with themes of memory and homesickness. Do you approach these consciously?

— No, never consciously.

If I try to paint with a defined subject in mind, I feel blocked. The process for me is instinctive — almost hypnotic. When I paint, it feels as though I am inside a dream. Only afterwards do I “wake up” and begin to understand what has emerged.

The themes reveal themselves later — through writing, through reflection, through conversations. I don’t choose the subject; the subject chooses me. I simply allow it to move through me. Meaning only begins to take shape at the end.

— Could you tell me about this piece and what was present in your mind and heart while making it?

— While creating this body of work, I became deeply immersed in the hand’s function as a communicative part of the body — almost like an antenna, tuning the whole being into specific states and receiving something unseen. The hand carries gestures that speak a language predating meaning itself, before spoken or written words.

The letter-like formations and symbols I generate are traces of a dancing hand — a dance that emerges only when the mind is empty and the heart is open, moving according to the natural flow of the world.

Through this work, I began noticing connections between these forms, the Arabic language, petroglyphs and natural traces. I first recognised the shapes while moving across a large canvas on the floor. They resembled Arabic letters, yet were not quite Arabic. When I traced them back, I realised they were simply the result of my hands in motion.

That was when I understood that every writing system is, at its core, a system of movement. This exploration is still ongoing, and I intend to give it the time and space it needs to evolve fully.

— The body plays a strong role in your work. Could you tell me more about this piece and what you were exploring here?

— I often find myself watching people move, noticing the traces their movements seem to leave behind — as if their forms extend beyond the physical limits of the body. Their faces, their hands, the way they walk or turn. Their shapes keep shifting. We are always shifting.

This body of work was my attempt to capture one of my own dances within a single frame — to hold it still, to see it all at once.

I created many rearrangements as well, because I believe one thing contains endless variations of its essence. I enjoy reattaching elements in different ways, watching the same meaning unfold from new angles. It is a way of defamiliarising what my eyes have grown used to — refreshing my sensitivity to the work itself.

I have done this with many of my paintings too, fragmenting them and recomposing the pieces to create a new rhythm for the same feeling — one that feels alive on its own.

For me, this process is deeply exciting, because a similar fragmentation is happening in my mind. My thoughts break apart and reconnect, forming new associations. It reminds me that the world is dynamic and constantly shifting — and that the brain is always adjusting to it.

In that sense, the work reflects an internal psychological process just as much as an external visual one.

— Tell me about your last exhibition that you have recently presented in the UAE. What shaped that exhibition?

— It marked a new chapter for me. I had recently moved to the UAE and produced the exhibition in Abu Dhabi. At the time, I was living very quietly — almost in isolation. I stayed in my apartment for long stretches and didn’t feel the need to go out. It was the first time I truly experienced being alone in that way.

During those first months, I missed the desert intensely. Before going to sleep, I would imagine myself walking there — the openness, the silence, the vastness. I realised how much of my inspiration had always come from that landscape. Being physically away from it forced me to find it internally. Instead of travelling outward, I began travelling inward. I would close my eyes and return to it in my imagination — and it felt real.

In that sense, I rediscovered the desert again, but this time within myself rather than outside of me.

The exhibition became an exploration of that internal desert. I kept asking: how does the body move there? What is the rhythm of movement in such a space? What does the body “sound” like in silence? Who — or what — do you connect with?

On the canvases, something like a proto-language began to emerge — early symbols, almost scripts before meaning. The work was entirely white-on-white: just surface, light, and these quiet inscriptions. It felt peaceful. Primordial. Like I had touched a place I wanted to return to again and again.

The exhibition is titled Hujra. In Arabic, the word means “chamber”, and its root connects to stone. A rock, in that sense, is a chamber — a holder of frequencies. I began to think of rocks as containers of pure vibration. When you connect with them, you begin to resonate with that frequency. It enters your body, and you start moving according to it.

Each rock seemed to carry a different vibration, and each vibration materialised in the paintings. Sometimes I could almost hear it — like distant music. Frequency becomes movement. Movement becomes sound. It felt playful, beautiful, alive.

— You recently began working with a theremin. What drew you to that instrument?

— The theremin fascinated me because it works through an invisible field. It generates an electromagnetic field between two antennas, and your movement within that field determines pitch and volume. The closer you move, the higher the note. The further away, the lower it becomes.

For years, I wanted to collaborate with a musician who could translate my movement into sound. Then I remembered the theremin. I ordered one, and now I play it almost daily. It is deeply meditative. For the first time, I can hear my movement.

The gestures I make with my hands — the same ones that become scripts and symbols on canvas — now produce sound. It feels like the same language expressed in a different dimension.

— Have you experienced burnout?

— Yes, very recently. After completing the exhibition, I was so exhausted that I didn’t even want to attend the opening. When you work intensely — diving into your psyche, unveiling and expressing — you expend something profound. It isn’t only physical fatigue; it is psychic exhaustion.

I had to learn to step back. Burnout requires grounding. Simple things: cooking, walking, moving, reading something uncomplicated, returning to the body.

It took me about three months to recover, and it happens in different forms after every major production. You give everything, right down to the core; you stretch beyond yourself. There is a beautiful Arabic Sufi saying that speaks to this: اتّسع عليك الداخل — “your inner world has expanded beyond you.”

There are small burnouts during the process, which can be managed by stepping back at the right time. But sometimes there is a grand burnout. That one can't be controlled. It asks you to pause, to shed, to prepare for a new phase — and to adjust the outer world to a newly expanded inner one. I am still learning how to listen to it properly.

— Have you ever been surprised by how audiences interpret your work?

— Resonance fills me with euphoria, especially when it becomes collective; it feels like a melody moving through my whole body. When people meet the work on the same frequency from which it was created, I see it in their eyes and in the few words they offer — and that gives me both hope and a quiet sense of responsibility. I am less interested in how the work was made than in what it awakens. In my latest exhibition, the same words surfaced again and again: dreamlike, peaceful, ancient, rocks, desert.

That consistency felt like success. I measure the purity of a work by the quality of feeling it evokes — when the core sensation reaches people before analysis or narrative. I once painted dark, heavy pieces, but now I feel called to offer something that restores balance. The world is already heavy; I don’t feel the need to add more tragedy.

— If you had to describe your artistic purpose in one sentence, what would it be?

— To open channels for the heart to feel and speak. We live in a highly material, rational world — dominated by logic and analysis — where the left brain is the trusted authority. The heart has been reduced to an organ that simply pumps blood. Yet it is far more intelligent than that.

Working from the heart requires constant care and maintenance. Healing. Honesty. It asks that we keep it open every day, because once neglected, it begins to close. For me, healing art is about allowing light to pass through material form as purely as possible — and the open heart is the portal through which that light is both received and given, where its intelligence shapes matter.

It is about reviving the heart — and giving from it.