Meet the Author
Elika Blake
Elika Blake is an auction house professional with a specialty in the modern and contemporary arts of the SWANA region. Elika joined the Middle East & India division at Sotheby's in 2022, where she currently works as Cataloguer for Modern & Contemporary Middle East, supporting the biannual sales. In 2024, she is co-project managing Hafla, a series of exhibitions spanning the arts of Islam to the contemporary visual culture of the Arab Gulf. Elika is currently completing her MA in Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS University of London. She received her BA in History of Art from the University of Manchester, during which time her British-Persian heritage served as a great source of inspiration for her independent research. She was awarded for her dissertation which formed a chronological study of the relation between art and identity in twentieth-century Iran. Her postgraduate research interests include the art market, global curatorial practices and art institutions in the Arab Gulf states, and she is currently conducting her dissertation on a comparative study of biennials through the lens of Arab art. In 2024, Elika co-curated Hudood: Rethinking Boundaries, an exhibition of contemporary works from the Barjeel Art Foundation at the SOAS Gallery in London. Her essay, ‘Spatiality and Selfhood in the Modern Gulf City,’ features in the exhibition’s accompanying publication.