Fozia Ismail
Fozia Ismail, British Somali artist and researcher using Somali feminist nomadic thinking across food, sound, textiles and immersive storytelling.
Fozia Ismail, Spike Portrait 2026, Lisa Whiting Photography
Worked on
Alternative Technologies: A Just Transition
This workshop series examines technologies and their past, present, and future role in climate justice (and breakdown) and explores what the alternatives could be, through a process of carefully facilitated design thinking
MyWorld - Strength in Places
Watershed is excited to be a partner in MyWorld, a project led by the University of Bristol that will celebrate the West of England's reputation as an international trailblazer in creative technology and screen-based media.Fozia Ismail (b.1980, Kuwait City, Kuwait) is a British Somali artist, founder of Arawelo Eats, and co-founder of dhaqan collective. Working across food, sound, textiles, and found objects, her practice explores migration, climate, identity, and diasporic memory through collective and material-led forms. Rooted in Somali nomadic feminist teachings, her work treats everyday cultural practices as living archives of care, knowledge, and survival.
Central to her practice are inherited materials and objects connected to her mother’s Somali nomadic roots- vessels, spices, textiles, cassette tapes, and sound recordings. These objects are activated through collective use and transformed into sculptural, time-based, and archival works through use of touch response technologies to move audiences from passive spectators into active participants into the work.
She has designed and delivered workshops/presentations for: Keep It Complex, Company Drinks, Serpentine Gallery, Jerwood Project Space, Tate Modern, Museum of London, National Trust -Colonial Countryside Project, Media Bounty, Barings Bank -Oxford Cultural Collective, Courtauld Art Institute, London School of Economics, Sharjah Art Foundation, Black Archives Sweden, Moderna Museet Stolkholm, Jodhpur Art Week, Art House Jersey, Wellcome Collection, Culture House, Counterpoints/British Council, Radical Ecology, and was Bristol City Fellow for Arnolfini Contemporary Art Centre in 2019 for her project Camel Meat & Cassette Tapes. Her project on Camel meat & Cassette Tapes was covered by The Guardian and BBC Africa Daily.
For co-produced podcast on Cassette Tape Cultures with Caraboo Projects- listen here.
Her work has been published by Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery (2017), Vittles Magazine, and Shado Magazine and has been featured on Observer Food Magazine, BBC Radio 4 Food Programme, Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery Ox Tales podcast, Food 52, London Eater, Vice Munchies, Vittles.
Her latest installation, A Song for the Xeedho- The Knot Makers was commissioned by Counterpoint Arts and Whitechapel Gallery as part of the inaugural Backyard Biennale: East, celebrating 125 years of Whitechapel Gallery.
Featured in The London Post, Art Plugged, Selvedge Magazine, Alt-Africa, Hyphen Online, Flo London, Broadsheet London.
A Song for the Xeedho- The Knot Makers was funded by Arts Council England.