Wardha Shabbir

Rooted in Lahore — long celebrated as a historic centre of miniature painting — Wardha Shabbir’s (b. 1987, Lahore, Pakistan) artistic language has evolved through a sustained dialogue with her surroundings. Trained at the National College of Arts, Lahore, in the rigor of this classical discipline, she both honours and transcends its conventions. Her practice expands the miniature tradition into new conceptual and formal territories, merging abstraction, symbolism, and reflections on identity and belonging.

In Shabbir’s work, the picture plane becomes a terrain where observation and imagination converge. Elements from Lahore’s natural world intertwine with spiritual and psychological landscapes, creating visual metaphors for femininity, agency, and transformation. The interplay between void and form defines her pictorial language, while darker entities emerging within her compositions evoke unseen energies and inner states of metamorphosis.

Her detailed depictions of nature form ecosystems of persistence and renewal — cycles where endings and beginnings merge. Each composition acts as a cartography of experience, opening passages, enclosures, and luminous thresholds that reveal layered worlds within worlds. Through these spatial explorations, Shabbir not only maps her environment but also navigates between past and future, using her art as a means of reflection and rediscovery.

Wardha Shabbir has been invited to the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh, presenting several works across the Giardini and the Arsenale. She has recently participated in major international exhibitions, including the 32° Pontevedra Biennale: To Be Humans Again (Galicia, Spain, 2025) and the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT11, QAGOMA, Brisbane, Australia, 2024). Her work has been exhibited at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (India, 2023), Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai, 2019), Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 2018), Lahore Biennale – LB01 (Pakistan, 2018), and Dhaka Art Summit (Bangladesh, 2014). Her work is held in several public collections, including the British Museum (London), the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi), the Museum of Pontevedra (Spain), and the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane (Australia).