Maha’s current project at the RCA examines biological optimisation in an era defined by the pursuit of longevity. As biology becomes increasingly editable, her work asks whether the desire for biological agelessness is driven by hope or by fear, and what we are willing to trade in the process. The human hand has become the central subject in Maha’s paintings. Her compositions take hands beyond their illustrative idea into a more speculative space where broader questions can emerge.

These paintings are built through scrapping-off, re-painting, applying washes creating information and ambiguity, mirroring that speculative space. Repetition, observation, stepping away, waiting and resolving loops in the process. Drawing remains fundamental to these compositional, tonal and spatial decisions, while translucent washes and carefully accumulated surfaces create depth, ambiguity and contemporary resonance.

Working between representational painting and conceptual figuration, Maha employs painting as a language of enquiry rather than illustration. Earlier series of work explored cultural stereotypes, family portraiture, material hedonism, and abstract responses to her digitally translated paintings.