Mary Yacoob is an artist based in North London. Drawing sits at the heart of Yacoob's practice, though her work stretches across ink on paper, cyanotypes, etching, large-scale vinyl, light-boxes, video animation and sculpture. She borrows the visual languages of science and systems — diagrams, architectural plans, maps, engineering schematics, alphabets, musical notation — and transforms them into something else entirely, taking scientific and practical diagrams out of their original context to create new connections and dialogues across the arts and sciences, and turning functional tools into ciphers for the imagination.
This impulse, to draw artistic meaning out of the abstract visual language of science, has a notable precedent in twentieth-century British sculpture. Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth were both inspired by mathematical string models: instruments of "descriptive geometry" in which strings stretched across brass frames visualised geometric surfaces and equations. As a student at the Royal College of Art in the early 1920s, Moore first encountered such models at the Science Museum in London. Hepworth learned of a related collection of mathematical models in Oxford in December 1935, when the architect John Summerson told her about "some marvellous things in a mathematical school." Neither artist was drawn to the models' scientific function; what captivated them was their formal and imaginative potential — Moore spoke of being able "to look through the strings as with a bird cage and to see one form within another." Moore made his "Stringed Figures" between 1937 and 1940 (including "Stringed Figure," 1938, and "Reclining Stringed Figure," 1939), while Hepworth began her own string sculptures in 1939.
Yacoob's practice can be read as a contemporary continuation of that same impulse, extending it from three-dimensional form into drawing, print and installation, and widening its source material from mathematical models to the fuller visual vocabulary of scientific and technical diagrams. She explores how colour, material, scale, composition and texture contribute to the meanings we project onto visual representations of ideas, seeking to convey how an embodied, aesthetic relationship with scientific imagery can catalyse fruitful chains of associative thought. The hand-made gesture, repetition, rhythm, and systems of order and chance are all key aspects of her practice, encouraging an intimate relationship with the viewing public. Spatial forms unfold in time, revealing an intricate depth of detail.
Solo exhibitions include Bobinska Brownlee New River, Surgery Gallery, Five Years Gallery and the Hospital Club. Commissions include UCL's Faculty of Life Sciences, Writers Mosaic, Passengers/Camden Council, and BBC/Arts Council England. Yacoob is undertaking a practice-based PhD at The Slade School of Fine Art. In addition, she was the recipient of an Arts Council England award for her exhibition and publication "Schema" in 2020. Group shows include The Warburg Institute, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Bruce Castle Museum, Laurent Delaye, Thames-Side Studios, Phoenix Art Space, Gallery 46, and Ruskin Gallery. Artist residencies include OOF Gallery, Flat Time House (with the Diagram Research Group), North Devon Artist Residency, Mutton Fist Press and the AA2A printmaking residency at Camberwell College of Art.
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Newsletter:
Courtesy and ©Mary Yacoob and Renée Pfister Art & Gallery Consultancy: (text) 2026.
Video:
Courtesy and ©Mary Yacoob, by: Bensound.com/free-music-for-videos Artist: Theatre of Delays, License code: XAO3PI6WRYZCRXBH and Renée Pfister Art & Gallery Consultancy: text, with the assistance of Gözde Altun, 2026. All rights reserved.