Rita Keegan Women of Colour Award Finalist

by blood, by guide, by call 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, London, 2026 Finalists' exhibition for the Rita Keegan Women of Colour Art Award. For this exhibition, I created two new site-specific carved woodcuts drawing on family photographs, Somali folklore and jinn encounters. Through repeated acts of carving, the works gradually reveal women gathering at the beach and dancing alongside the jinn, holding these encounters as moments of celebration, ritual and presence. Working through subtraction and repetition, the carved surfaces allow everyday life and the unseen to exist alongside one another. "Deeqa Ismail eats the wood, using a process of removal through woodcutting." Ariel Collier, curator