The pluralism inherent in the work of women artists has often gone unnoticed. Sweeping generalizations fail to analyze the multiple socio-historical structures which are not reducible to simple biological difference. Patriarchal ideologies run deep and wide. Different gauntlets encountered by women artists provoke the critical response which defines their practice. This provocation coalesces with distilled sensory experience as the work commences. 

Four artists, whose origins are in South Asia, converse through their practices, these are complex encounters. The determinants which have shaped their art and their unrest are a common bond.

Embracing and escaping traditional constraints simultaneously, each artist is acutely aware of the loaded connotations embedded in their choice of medium and process. The intimacies of these interactions with material and form, which are brimming with meanings, have intensity which is often painful for both the viewer and the artist. 

The homes, the sanctuary, the body, physicality of the garment, all surround inhibit, and suffocate. Each artist grapples with her own questioning, doubting, dreaming and making. These genteel under tones, the tenderness, and the temperate images can be misleading. The work quietly seethes with dissent and a denial of subservience.

Nida Bangash, Ruby Chishti, Aisha Abid Hussain and Sania Samad, articulate new strategies and interventions in their art making. The semiology of their practices evades being labeled ‘representation’ and instead claims a space which is both dissonant and demanding.

The works overflow with candor, heartache and a celebratory self-realization which runs like a river through their artistic collusion. 

- Salima Hashmi, 2025

Aisha Abid Hussain

‘Conversation with cold white surfaces’ was the first experience I had when it comes to Art Making. Starting from the blank white pages of a diary which is a symbol of keeping a day to day record of one’s pains and pleasures to the claustrophobic images filled with unreadable text spreading like a contagious virus.  Starting from a very personal emotional turmoil it grew up to become a political comment such as ‘Personal is Political’. A crucial aspect of my creative practice is working in an archival mode. Being a research based practicing artist I get fascinated by history whether it is personal or worldly. The thought of exploring hidden treasures of narrative yet to be told excites me while digging for ancient documents, scripts, photographs and text. The images are static yet moving, the words say nothing but they breathe. It’s like weaving of a net or making of a cocoon with ultimate patience and sheer pleasure just as one’s develop a relationship or a spiritual contact. The lucidity in the free flowing forms is organic reminding one of body secretions as well. The works executed in liquid medium, reflects the obsessiveness with the process, a force to explode, a desire to break free from something tightly knotted. I recall a deep intense pain of a loss by the aged and pale paper, the sorrow one feels for the lost time and relationships. The heartbreaking ache for one’s own existence, the imbalance and crudeness of life constitute a mellow palette and mood. 

I deeply value my training as a Miniature Painter and by utilising this sensibility, I move back and forth from traditional to contemporary mediums in order to explore the undiscovered aspects of art making in the region to a broader level.

Nida Bangash

My mashq-based practice engages paradoxical issues of loss, dislocation, displacement and territoriality through examining the domestic as charged political space. Coming from a tradition of musawri - miniature painting - and carpet weaving, I am interested in the formal and conceptual underpinnings of the grid - a binary structure of power, which bears, gives form to, and disappears into the composition itself. 

Born in the city of Mashhad in eastern Iran and raised in Pakistan, my practice explores these historically complex and interconnected artistic cultures and practices. Trained at The National College of Arts, Lahore Pakistan, in the traditions of Persian and South Asian manuscript painting, my practice continues to challenge its boundaries. Through the process of Mashq, an interdisciplinary practice, loosely translated as exercise, repetition or circumambulation, I draw from my immediate surroundings, as well as Indo-Persian history to investigate institutions as remnants of colonial legacies. 

The complexities of my concerns are explored through a cross disciplinary approach of painting, sculpture, performance and video installations. I explore the relation between contrasting mediums, aspiring to mediate static and moving images through an aesthetic that embodies the essence of miniature painting practice.

Ruby Chisti

My artistic exploration revolves around the melding of found garments and social memory, intimately engaging with "fashion detritus" to spark conversations about the enduring passage of time and collective human experiences of love, loss and what it means to be human. 

Building on over two decades of experimentation my work is driven by a desire to connect with communities I’ve never encountered and to honor the people I’ve loved and lost. These memorials emerge as stratified layers of history, akin to the geological phenomena of "deep time," where sediment accumulates over millennia to tell the story of the Earth. 

Rooted in my background as a student of Punjabi literature, my work draws inspiration from the humility and reverence of male Punjabi Sufi poets who adopted the female voice to challenge societal norms. 

Through the act of hand-sewing, I engage with a craft passed down through generations of unsung female heroes, honoring the battles they fought long before me. This intimate practice fosters a profound connection to their resilience and humanity. 

I am drawn to what discarded, mass-produced garments reveal about us— our interdependence on other humans and life forms, how we perceive and experience the world, and the traces left by those near, distant, or absent. 

Through the processes of dismantling and reassembling discarded clothing, I weave new narratives that reconstruct cultural memory and time. In doing so, I challenge patriarchy, systems of exclusion, and the superficial portrayal of women’s bodies, instead recognizing them as resilient, lovable beings whose lifelong struggles and stories are deeply etched into their very existence. 

Saina Samad

Textiles serve as vessels for exploring memory and history—both personal and collective—within my practice. Using materials imbued with cultural and emotional resonance, I weave narratives that resist unraveling in the face of conflict, embracing the layered complexities of identity and heritage while evoking hope and subversion.

The act of puncturing fabric with embroidery needles is a deliberate gesture—an intervention into the flow of time. Each stitch bridges fragmented memories, reimagining them as opportunities for new connections. These gestures transform textiles into "tactile archives," where the textures of history, emotion, and imagination converge. This archive is not static but alive—inviting touch, evoking emotion, and sparking dialogue between past and present.

The birds and animals that populate my surfaces are central to this archive, each carrying its own resonance—cultural, symbolic, and personal. Cats evoke resilience and mystery, their presence steeped in folklore and domestic intimacy. Parrots, with their vibrant voices, symbolize communication and mimicry, reflecting the interplay between individual and collective expression. Sparrows, humble yet enduring, embody themes of freedom, migration, and survival. These symbols, much like memory itself, hold multiple meanings shaped by their contexts and the hands that stitch them into the fabric.

By layering and repurposing materials, textures, and symbols, my work creates spaces where past, present, and future converse—and perhaps even converge—as time collapses at these junctures. The intention is not to impose fixed ideas of identity but to encourage dynamic exploration, acknowledging identity as fluid, evolving, and interconnected. This process underscores the resilience of human imagination and the enduring power of textiles as mediums for expression, transformation, and aspiration.

About the curator

Salima Hashmi is an artist curator and contemporary art historian. She taught at the National College of Arts, Lahore for 30 years and was also the Principal for four years and Professor of Fine Arts. She was later founding Dean at the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore where she is currently Emerita Professor and Director of the UNESCO Madanjeet Institute of South Asian Art. 

She has written extensively on the arts and curated exhibitions of contemporary art and traditional textile both in Pakistan and abroad. Her book Unveiling the Visible–Lives and Works of Women Artists of Pakistan was published in 2002, followed by Memories, Myths, Mutations– Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan, co-authored with Yashodhara Dalmia, in 2006. She also edited The Eye Still Seeks–Contemporary Art of Pakistan in 2014. Her many curatorial assignments include Hanging Fire, an exhibition of Pakistani Contemporary Art for Asia Society Museum, New York in 2009, the critically acclaimed exhibition titled This Night-Bitten Dawn in Delhi and, most recently, a show of photography (Watan) by Graciela Magnoni in Dubai. 

The government of Pakistan awarded her the President's Medal for Pride of Performance for Art Education in 1999. For her work in the field of art, Salima Hashmi was awarded the Sughra Rababi Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024 and also a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Lahore Literary Festival. The Australian Council of Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) nominated her Inaugural International Fellow for distinguished service to art and design education in 2011 and she received the Alma Award from Alma Culture Center, Oslo, Norway for promotion of tolerance through performance in 2016. The same year she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Bath Spa University, UK. 

She is council member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Chairperson of Faiz Foundation Trust. She is a daughter of famous Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.