About

Originals by Zara Akmalova

My work sits within contemporary figurative expressionism, using the human body as a vessel for emotion and symbol.

Creativity has been my first language—poems, performance, strong opinions, a clear inner vision. I trained as an actor and took on film roles, but over time I realised I was often living inside someone else’s frame. Painting became the place where my own voice could be fully heard.

My technique is a kind of collaboration with the paint. I begin with a pour, I guide the palette, and then I let the medium decide its final architecture—colours drying as they will, forming shapes my imagination can enter and resolve. Because of this, no work can be repeated. Each piece is singular, unrepeatable, and deliberately so.

I paint from the life I’m living: moving between continents, absorbing different landscapes and light, meeting different versions of myself across changing seasons. Through figurative expressionism, I try to give a face to my generation—many curious, complex personalities, united not by one identity, but by one shared truth: feeling.

Gallery