Somayra Ismailjee is an essayist, currently focused on contemporary visual art and its sociopolitical dimensions. Her work has appeared in Eureka Street, Hi-Fructose, The Lifted Brow, Faster Louder and The Sydney Morning Herald, among others, and she was the inaugural recipient of the Margaret Dooley Young Writers Fellowship for social justice and current affairs writing. Across the visual arts, she has written accompanying essays for exhibitions by Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (Everything is True, 2021), Aisyah Aaqil Sumito and Sophie Nixon (Magical Woman, 2019), Nada DeCat (Finite Gestures, 2017), Abdul-Rahman Abdullah and Anna-Louise Richardson (Dead Centre, 2016), and Nick Zafir (Folds, 2015).
