Taslim van Hattum

Taslim van Hattum is a multi-disciplinary artist raised in Northern New Mexico to the sounds of the Turkish saz in a woodshop in the village of Abiquiu. Her work focuses on how contemporary society intersects with religious and sociopolitical identities, representations and women–challenging and exposing the way in which space, personhood, belief and popular culture are connected and imagined by the viewer. Her work disrupts notions of Muslim womanhood, Muslim femininity and identity without resorting to easier tropes of a niqabi in a bikini or other more simplistic juxtapositions that don’t always delve deeper into the subtlety of what it means to vacillate between cultures, religions, identities and loyalties. Her work is at once indigenous to her experience as a Muslim woman, deeply critical of her own cultural and religious frameworks, and irreverent, silly, and crafted with purpose.

Taslim is also committed to her career as a social worker and public heath professional in New Orleans, Louisiana. She currently serves as the Director of the Maternal and Child Health Portfolio at the Louisiana Public Health Institute. In her spare time beyond art and public health she devises elaborate, unfulfilled plans to kill the possum family living in her studio roof.

Her most recent project is 100 Muslim Women.