Artist Statement

My work explores the cultural and racial melancholy of my identity as the daughter of immigrants from Pakistan and Guatemala. Through paintings and drawings, I explore figures, flowers, objects, vessels, and symbols to delve into the intersections of identity, culture, and history. Engaging in traditions of historical still life and manuscript painting, the work focuses on compositions to render objects that define who we are and where we come from. My work reflects a search for balance between three distinct yet intertwined cultural worlds, each with its own traditions, values, and struggles impacted by colonial legacies and imperialist structures to explore the potentials of self. For me, flowers become figurative representations that carry agency, beauty, and longing but they can also be displaced and disconnected. Flowers are often paired with figures and celestial symbols to gesture towards a space of dislocation as it relates to my own racial identity as a woman of mixed race. By drawing from myths, romances, and epics from the Indo-Persian miniature tradition, I seek to rewrite a visual narrative that acknowledges fragmentation while suggesting nuance and possibility. I am interested in a female gaze, one that is charged with desire, longing, and sometimes uncertainty. Symbols such as the crescent moon loom over figures and flowers to acknowledge history, religion, and culture and seek to frame the figures in romance and melancholy. Objects, flowers, and figures float within black spaces in my work visually reflect the physical and emotional distances that exist between one and another. In this way, my work becomes a space for connection and disruption, where memory and identity intersect, offering a visual expression of the journey towards belonging.