Monthly Meetups are held on the third Monday of every month, 7-8pm UK time in central London. Meetups are run by Ali Malik.

Victoria Gugenheim is an award-winning body painter, artist, and make-up artist, Victoria is also the resident artist for CEMB.

Drawing before she could talk, starting makeup at age 6, progressing to face and bodypainting at 9, Victoria Gugenheim has always had an intense drive to create. Deeply studious and compulsively curious, it is this intense need to understand the world around us that fuels her desire to create beautiful works that provoke a reaction, and make people think. Her drive is to understand why we do what we do, and how we can become more than we are.

Through her questioning of the world and her research into art and our origins, she has become passionate about the necessity of, and merges, art with science. She believes art and science share a common ancestor with the human imagination, and without imagination there can be no hypothesising.  Art is the first visual, material, tangible “What if?” that humanity had, and it started 300,000 years ago deep in the caves near the twin Zambini Rivers of Zimbabwe. There, Homo Heildelbergenesis created the first known art; art on the human body. This was used for rituals, accessing altered states of consciousness, tribal hierarchies, and more besides. The key was its immediate, visceral effect that had the capacity to transform our ancestors into greater versions of themselves. After learning of this, she was hooked on bodypainting and makeup for good.

 Victoria’s art, both mainstream and alternative, has been part of a lifelong quest of both adorning and “de-othering” people through art, public speaking and personal aesthetic choice, and understands that when someone others another human being, it dehumanizes them, objectifies them and makes them a target for everything, from stereotyping at best to at worst, victims of violence, poverty and death; This is most oftentimes caused by fear born of ignorance. Through connecting art, science, visual representations of the self, human rights activism and questioning what we can become both aesthetically and intellectually, Victoria has carved a niche that no other artist to date has dared step into.

Fully committed to living her art, Victoria is not afraid of standing out in the crowd, and encourages others to raise their voices and be heard in a world which cherishes the average over the individual. She believes that only with the realisation of yourself and a willingness to connect with others without othering them, can humanity progress.

Her art ranges from bodypainting, makeup, photography, performances, installations, digital art, clothing design, drawing and painting, merging with science and technology. Never wanting to be limited, she sought out any media necessary to make a concept work- and it is this industriousness that has helped bring her her current success.

Her clients have included Cirque le Soir, Nokia, London Fashion Week, Models of Diversity, Charlotte Church, Alice Cooper’s Halloween Night of Fear, Girls Roc and The World Bodypainting Festival among many others, as well as private commissions that are undertaken with great care, attention to detail and patience. She uses bodypainting as a way of empowering the human spirit, giving the person painted a new found confidence that can be life changing.

Monthly Meetup in London

Monthly Meetups are held on the third Monday of every month, 7-8pm UK time in central London. Meetups are run by Ali Malik.

This meet-up speaker is Pragna Patel who will talk about the Sikh court in Britain and what it means for women’s rights.

Pragna Patel is Founder of Project Resist! Previously she was a founding member of the Southall Black Sisters (SBS) and Women Against Fundamentalism. She worked as a co-ordinator and senior case worker for SBS from 1982 to 1993, when she left to train and practice as a solicitor. In 2009 she returned to SBS as its Director. She was centrally involved in some of SBS’ most important cases and campaigns around domestic violence, immigration and religious fundamentalism. She has also written extensively on race, gender and religion.

RSVP with ali.malik@ex-muslim.org.uk to book your attendance.

Monthly Meetup in London

Monthly Meetups are held on the third Monday of every month, 7-8pm UK time in central London. Meetups are run by Ali Malik.