Heavy footed and noble, the floorboards give little shrieks 2023
Operating at the threshold between the real and the imagined, Aisha Christison constructs pictorial worlds where the quotidian becomes estranged. Familiar spaces—hotel rooms, workbenches, airplanes—are reconfigured into psychological stages, charged with latent tension and mystery. Although aligned with Surrealist strategies, her works resist the fantastical, instead hovering, as she describes, “on the edge of verisimilitude.” Christison’s paintings invite viewers into the suspended moment before disruption, evoking the paradoxical calm before the storm.
Aisha Christison (b. 1989) is a London-based artist whose work explores the psychological terrain of the human mind through meticulously composed, surreal-tinged tableaux. Rooted in the principles of psychoanalysis, her practice creates imaginary portraits of the psyche, presenting familiar scenes destabilized by illogical relationships between elements. This delicate disturbance generates a tension that she describes as the “calm before the storm,” immersing viewers in a space that oscillates between the rational and the uncanny.
Christison’s work has been presented at leading contemporary art venues across Europe. She made her debut in 2016 at the Florence Trust Winter Open in London, and has since exhibited at Bold Gallery in Prague (What If I Hypnotize You, 2025), Flora Fairbairn & Co. in London (Once Upon a Time…, 2023), White Crypt in London, and Damien & The Love Guru in Brussels. Her works have been shown alongside artists such as Eleanor Moreton and Bea Bonafini, situating her within a dynamic network of contemporary European painters rethinking the boundaries of psychological and surrealist image-making.