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Maliheh Afnan was born in Palestine in 1935 of Persian parents, educated in Beirut and Washington. She lived in Paris for more than twenty years, before moving to London, where she died in January 2016. The recent book Maliheh Afnan: Traces, Faces, Places was published by Al Saqi Books & Beyond Art Productions in 2009. It spans her 50-year career and accompanied a major exhibition at the Martin Gropius Bau Museum in Berlin: Taswir: Pictorial Mappings of Modernity & Islam in 2009-10. Afnan's work, which both reflects and transcends her personal history, is represented in the Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris and the British Museum in London where in 2006 she was included in the exhibition Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East. Afnan has exhibited in many international exhibitions, and had solo exhibitions in the UK at Leighton House Museum in 1993 (curated by Rose Issa), and at England & Co in 2000 and 2006. Afnan was included in the England & Co exhibitions Wandering Lines i (2011) & ii (2012).

Writing on the Wall 2000
29.5 x 43.25 inches
Mixed media on paper

Acquired from England & Co for the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum.

Letter of an Illiterate c 1980s
19 x 24.75 inches
Mixed media on paper

Private collection

Open Letter 1998
19 x 24.5 inches
Mixed media on paper

Private collection