Analy Nakat

Instagram: @AnalyNakat
Website: www.AnalyNakat.com

Bio: I am a multidisciplinary visual artist originally from Lebanon, now based in Los Angeles. My family and I relocated to San Antonio, Texas, when I was 14 to escape the war and economic hardships. This transition brought immense challenges, including learning a new language and adapting to an unfamiliar culture. Art became my refuge, allowing me to process the contrasts between the life I left behind and the one I was building in the U.S.

Growing up, I frequently traveled between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, where my father worked as a civil engineer. The war in Lebanon made it difficult to find stable work, and Saudi Arabia presented its own challenges with its strict gender roles and cultural restrictions. These experiences shaped my view of cultural diversity and human adaptability, themes that continue to influence my work today.

At 18, I moved to Oakland to pursue my passion for art, studying illustration at the California College of the Arts and later expanding my focus to printmaking, painting, and drawing. The Bay Area’s vibrant, diverse community deeply impacted my artistic development, blending my Lebanese heritage with American individualism.

My art explores themes of resilience, transformation, and nostalgia, often through surreal imagery of women, animals, and nature. I work with fine details and unconventional materials, using found objects alongside traditional canvases. My creative process is driven by personal experiences, the natural world, and my fascination with anthropology, as I strive to create magical realms where nature and humanity coexist in harmony. Recently, as I've navigated my own healing journey, my work has evolved to explore the themes of resilience, the delicate balance between struggle, war and hope, and my connection to nature. These reflections are deeply influenced by the cultural dualities I have encountered throughout my life. I aim to showcase not only the beauty but also to confront the darker elements that shape our identities—experiences rooted in social, political, and racial contexts.
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Artist Statement: Analy Nakat has created an autobiography of life events in these series, but as a rat. Self-portraits forged from the wreckage of war, generational trauma, and silenced identity. Rooted in the chaos of surviving Lebanon’s violence and the scars of familial abuse, these ink drawings unfold like a sacred wound-layered, unflinching, and defiantly beautiful. 

The artist uses rats, creatures deemed unclean by society, yet rendered here with reverence. “The only thing that deems them dirty by society is the trash and circumstances that we force them to live in,” she says, a truth that applies as much to people as it does to animals.

This is not just survival - it is transfiguration. These pieces reclaim the power of being queer, Arab, an ex stripper, twice houseless, female, and unrepentantly different in a world that tried to silence all of it.

Titles/pricing:

Rat-iography series:

  • "Lesbanese", India Ink using ink nibs and brush on watercolor paper, $900

  • "Houseless Yet Again", India Ink using ink nibs and brush on watercolor paper, $850

  • "The Yellow Rose", India Ink using ink nibs and brush on watercolor paper, $975