Nadia Gohar and Digital Mythology

The Cairo-born, Toronto-based painter Nadia Gohar uses the classic genre of the still life to examine very modern questions of identity, nostalgia, and cultural dislocation. Her enormous, abstracted, and brightly-colored interiors are built on a wide foundation of references ranging from characters in mythology to André Breton’s second novel Nadja. Breton’s book begins with the most simple and existential question possible, “Who am I?”—an inquiry Gohar’s work also seeks to answer.

The collective Searching For collaborated with Gohar recently in their ongoing project: a series of image-based interviews that use the mood board language of the creative industry as their main form of journalism.

Why do you do what you do? How do you balance commercial success with maintaining a creative voice?

Who have you taken inspiration from, both artistically and in terms of how they market/advertise their work?

Do you actively market yourself? How? Has that changed over the course of your career to date?

What has been the hardest decision of your career so far? The most rewarding? Were they one and the same?

Do you think you have ever sold out? Is your relationship to money antagonistic or symbiotic?

How do you use the Internet in your artistic and studio practice? Do you start with online inspiration? Or is it more of a marketing platform—for giving your work wider exposure?

What is your approach to collaboration—specifically with geographic differences?

Does this inform your practice? Do most of your collaborations happen in physical space or in cyberspace?

What are you curious about in your peers? What should we ask the next person we interview?