Composed chaos — migration, memory, the paint and I.

Leyla Pooya Khan is a London-based visual artist whose practice retraces migration, memory and movement through the materiality of applied media.

Her work considers how the medium itself can serve as a conduit for journeys — through colour, texture, surface and form. Drawing on a palette inspired by spices, flowers, soil and the historical artefacts of her South Asian context, she continues to explore her cultural inheritance from both Pakistan and Iran as an ongoing process, intuitively weaving figurative painterly strokes into gestural abstraction and finding voice through composed chaos.

Her background in therapeutic counselling informs a sensitivity to memory, trauma and embodied painting, allowing her to move between personal history and collective narratives of displacement and belonging.

After completing a foundation year at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2003, she practised as a therapeutic counsellor and teacher while continuing to paint at home. In 2024, Pooya went on to complete a Graduate Diploma and a Master's in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London.