Born in London and raised primarily in Paris, Hamburg-based Hoda Tawakol is a Franco-Egyptian artist currently lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. Tawakol’s broad practice encompasses hand- dyed and sewn textile pieces, mixed media sculptures, fabric collages, and installations interweaving textures, grids and lattices in addition to works on paper. Her practice focuses on traditional ritual practices and imagery attempting to deconstruct symbols and archetypes that beset female agency.

Tawakol’s playful soft-sculptural 'Dolls' evoke dismembered and disarticulated body parts – specifically that of female origin – standings as totems to bodily empowerment and engendered agency. Each are created utilising found fabrics such as nylon tights, and stuffed with rice which of course as material in itself has its own weighty connotations of colonialism and historical hierarchical systems of power – further heightened by these exotic plumages of hair. Tawakol freely manipulates these materials to assimilate over-exaggerated bodily forms; hips, bosoms, and appendages. Paradoxically, her portrayal of these anonymous female figures are distilled through her imaginative perception of the male gaze of the female body blurring skewing the balance of traditional gender roles and hierarchical structures.