Sara Shakeel
"A dentist by profession, i make art for my soul sake, it healed me and believed it could heal others too, with time i have realized, it kind of does. being a collage artist, i make art out of art especially flowers and crystals. oddly i believe they heal me in extraordinary ways."
Collage artist Sara Shakeel has become known for her spectacular images, where she often superimposes different photos together to create beautiful alternate realities.
Sara taught herself how to use Photoshop after failing her last year of dental school, and from her "sadness and depression," she used her collages as a way of healing herself.
Recently she's used her artistic abilities to transform stretch marks in a powerful series where she added images of gold glitter, a blue galaxy, and shiny crystal to photos of actual stretch marks. The goal for these images was to really bring cellulite, stretch marks, and body empowerment into the limelight.
"I still remember that feeling of making those glitter stretch marks, and I was quite scared of uploading it," she says. "I am a Pakistani-based artist and talking about stretch marks or even making art out of it is not something you talk about on a regular basis."