This week we welcome Sarah Ahmad, a multimedia artist based in the U.S. and Pakistan.
Ahmad has exhibited internationally, from Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum and CUNY’s James Gallery in NY, to the Sharjah Art Museum in the United Arab Emirates. Her work appeared in Delhi Contemporary Art Week, the Asia Triennial Manchester in the U.K., and the Lahore Biennial in Pakistan.
Some of her pieces will be featured in Epicenter’s artist showcase at the Satellite Art Fair in Miami from December 4 to 8.
Ahmad’s socially engaged work has been funded by awards from the Andy Warhol Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, among others. As an immigrant working across national boundaries, Ahmad’s practice provides an awareness of geo-political environmental ties between global and local spheres, positioning her to bring voices from often marginalized areas. She earned a BFA from the National College of Arts in Lahore and an MFA from the Memphis College of Art. She is a former Tulsa Artist Fellow (2019–23), and has held numerous other residential fellowships, including at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, and the Virginia Center of Creative Arts.
“My work is enmeshed with nature: with its ability to effect healing, recognizing the connective tissue binding us to the earth. Land(scape) is a repository concealing and preserving our history. My current work examines racialized land displacement in the regional U.S. and Pakistan. I confront environmental injustice: the ‘nature gap’ experienced in marginalized communities. Invoking Sacred Geometry and recurring patterns across the natural world—from micro to human to macro, the cosmic—my work illuminates creation’s underlying oneness. In Fractured Alchemy, fragments of arboreal remnants are scarcely distinguishable from porous rocks: nature’s patterns linking them across matter,” she writes.
“In Urdu, the same word is used for ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ (کل | kul). Kul reveals a temporal sensibility that is fluid: future and past are coalesced, overlayed and etched into each other. My practice is about rebuilding a future from wreckage of the past, embracing the alchemy of transfiguration. Gold—a traditional quest for alchemists—considers the process of making the ordinary sacred. The birds in Parwaz are abstractions: collaged photos of glaciers in Gilgit-Baltistan’s majestic and ecologically endangered landscapes. The bird’s ascent suggests migration and narratives of belonging. For me as an immigrant, community and belonging are not static, but a poetic state, a process of continually engaging. My work seeks to manifest connection with the earth, with the rhythms of creation in an unceasing process of healing.”
See more of Ahmad’s work on her website and Instagram.
You can see more of our Artist of the Week features here.
