Fatima Jamil Franks also known as mAO is a nationally and internationally recognized interdisciplinary artist living and working in California, USA.
She works with digital mixed media collages as a medium to reference stigmatization, sexual objectification and gender inequalities faced by women in social, political and cultural contexts.
Through her work she attempts to subvert the patriarchal constructs, by re-directing it towards an evolving global discourse that women are beginning to engage in. The works are laden with visual documentations of the many perceived identities of women set by men. Her 10-year oeuvre calls for attention for the much-needed social reforms for the female gender.
She received a BFA from Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, Pakistan where she was born and raised and an MFA from the California State University, Fullerton. She later got her training in digital design extension course at the Otis College of Art L.A.
Her digital mixed media painting 'The Meeting' was awarded 2ndplace for the XIII Lorenzo IL Magnifico International Award in New Media at the Florence Biennale, Italy.
Franks recent work is taking a shift in materials and methodologies, as she intends for her ideologies to be understood in multiple dimensional ways. Along with digital paintings, she concurrently works with ceramics as well as moving images/short films.
As a feminist she intends for her art to be a powerful tool to annihilate hardwired historical beliefs held as correct and the stigmas attached to the 'lesser' gender. In her recent practice she attempts to cultivate a paradigm shift in the fundamental concepts of basic liberal democracy and rethinking prejudice against stereotyping race, sexuality and gender.
-mAO- in her studio working on the character 'Surraiya'. (From the 2021 short experimental film, Surraiya and the Anastral Spindle.)