Aïcha Khorchid (French, born in 1981) is a self-taught artist who started to paint only five years ago, but, in the meantime, has been noticed by serious international institutions and collectors.

Khorchid’s art centers on her life story: she was born in Pakistan from Palestinian and Lebanese parents who, shortly after her birth, emigrated to France and gave her to an orphanage since they were not able to care for her and their seven other children. Khorchid therefore grew up in a French foster family in Normandy, where she experienced love but also all kinds of abuse, which made her flee from home at a very young age. She dropped out of school, had a career as a quite successful dancer and, finally, several years ago moved to Mallorca, where she now lives and works. Introduced to art by an artist friend, she started to paint and found her voice very quickly. 

Her work is about human relationships and their complexity. In her paintings, Khorchid digests her complicated childhood in the foster family, painting the emotionally charged situations and people that inhabited that world. She uses her works as a vehicle that forces the viewer to think about the human condition. In La gardienne des Enfants (The Guardian of the Children) (2022), the main female character is surrounded by immigrants’ children that look frightened. The creases on the surface of the painting stress their vulnerable position and the beauty of the guardian suggests her kindness, as experienced at that time by the children. Après l’école, à la Maison (After school, at home) (2024) is a masterpiece in which Khorchid presents to the public her entire foster family, and includes herself as a young girl in the right corner of the painting. The beautiful calm green of the background helps accentuate the elaborately painted portrayals of the individual figures.

From the formal point of view, Khorchid doesn’t use any art historical references. She works with her very own combination of materials: organic pigments in powder form would be mixed with water and latex that fixes it. Next to this mixture, she would use oil chalk and pencil. Finally, she would apply a coat of rabbit glue. All paintings are on wood panel and life-size large to communicate with the public in a direct manner.