From 1-4 May, Karima will be at the pop-up gallery at Kiosk N1C on Lower Stable Street. Here she will be creating a mural, as well as painting portraits of selfies submitted via Instagram. If you’d like to have your portrait immortalised by Karimah as part of her Strangers Yearbook project, send a selfie to @strangersyearbook and let Karimah know how you are feeling during this time.

Until 2018, painting “was like a silent childhood best friend,” to Karimah Hassan; one that “drifted in and out” of her life. “I knew it was a part of me,” she says, “it just took time to understand where it fitted.” For the past three years, however, it’s become her complete and total focus. She now works full-time in a studio and on the streets of London, creating large painted murals wrought with emotion and texture. She’s also currently Artist in Residence at the Sarabande, the foundation set up by the late Alexander McQueen offering artists offering support and mentorship, something that’s pushing her art into “bigger spaces”, she says.

Feature Karimah Hassan and the importance of community

Championed by Trino Verkade

By asking people how they feel Karimah realised that we have so much more in common than we realise. Many of us feel shame about our emotions – we feel bad about feeling good, and bad about feeling bad – you can’t win.

Artist Karimah Hassan’s Portraits of Strangers Epitomises Global Connection in a Year of Separation

As 2020 continues to evolve in what seems like an on-going soap opera of plot twists and political tensions, these stories capture what it has meant to survive the highs and lows of 2020. ‘’Where were you in 2020?” will be a phrase that rings true for many of us beyond this decade – with Covid 19, Black Lives Matter, The US Elections and isolation, it’s vital that we archive the times we are living in, as told by the general population.