“I own my body.
​
That is what each of Nadine Faraj’s paintings declare. It is a loud and a proud declaration that looks you in the eye and dares you to shame it. I am shameless, it taunts and promises at the same time. You might own the gaze but the glorious bodies you are looking at own the pride.
I own my body. Not the state, the street or the home, not the temple. I insist on desire, pleasure and sex on my own terms, each of her subjects states. Hear the defiance that grounds each of the portraits.
​
Sex is chaos and liberation and joy. Nadine Faraj dares you to stand in that chaos and understand why it upends you so. Her colours and the bodies they bring to the paper instigate you to free yourself - they dare you! Her subjects emanate and illuminate a joy you want to reach out and touch; a joy that you will envy because it does not need your approval. Queer, non- conformist, rebellious, disobedient, loud, huge, THERE. Nadine Faraj’s art disrupts your gaze and demands that you disobey.”
​
- Mona Eltahawy, feminist author based in Cairo and New York.
​