Khushna Sulaman-Butt creates large scale figurative works, whose subjects are rooted in her British-Pakistani background as well as in the exploration of aesthetics of the female body, the subversive exchange of power latent in gender, societal expectation and stereotype. Sulaman-Butt creates her art by working from original photography, allowing the viewer to gain a position of either dominance or submission, questioning our perceptions of identity and culture.
Most of Khushna’s work is focused on modern society and is in particular influenced by Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, capturing individuals who exist in the spectacle of mass-media and exploring a relationship between the subjects and the media. Similar to photography, Khushna paints her subjects in and out of focus, exhibiting a strong degree of dynamism, questioning perceptions and the qualities of the mediums used further.