Wardha Shabbir - Paying homage to women's lived experiences through art
Meet visual practitioner and contemporary miniaturist, Wardha Shabbir. A Lahore native, she graduated from the National College Of Arts with honors in 2011 and has since been widely displayed on prestigious national and international platforms. Influenced by the foliage of her surroundings as well as contemporary architecture, her creative expression pays homage to women’s lived experiences.
Artist Wardha Shabbir On Connecting The Dots In Her Beloved City | Forbes
"When I go into the very details of my work, I try to mirror what I’ve imagined into my paintings, so on some level, I really have to lose myself somewhere. My whole body becomes a tool of my imagination. There’s no Wardha at that point in time – my hands, my arms, my paints, my canvas, everything becomes my tool. That specific state, when it’s being channeled, that’s a trance, but I think the feeling is more powerful and the word cannot do justice to the process. Maybe nirvana is a better word. Or just peace. It brings you closer to yourself. The more I understand my imagery better, the closer I get to understanding my own self better." - Wardha Shabbir
The Karachi Collective | A Beautiful Tension: Between Natural and Personal Realms
The spirit of Wardha Shabbir’s contemporary art practice remains embedded in the aesthetics and ethos of miniature painting and her enduring inquiry into the nature of what it means to encounter and immerse oneself in a sensory experience. Her visual research has been inspired by the identity and history of her city, Lahore. The flora and fauna she encountered in her home, city and its historical gardens have all continued to play a decisive role in informing and refining her visual research.
Conversations | Ink and Miniaturism at Art Basel Hong Kong 2023
Bridging Histories of Painting from East to West Asia.
Artists share the traditions they reference in their work to explore the histories of ink and miniature painting in Asia from a trans-regional perspective; from the emergence of religious pictorial art in South Asia and its transmission via Central Asia to China in the 3rd Century along the Silk Road, to Yuan Dynasty cultural exchanges with the Moghul and Ottoman courts, and revivals of Persian and miniature painting in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Precision, geometry and modern Pakistani art
Watching the flights of birds from her fifth-floor apartment in Lahore, she produces a cartography of that sojourn, keeping viewers guessing about their destination. [...] Being at Wardha Shabbir’s solo exhibition, one feels that like the leaves and birds, her new work is fluttering and flying, away from the definition and demarcation of tradition, technique, discipline and genre, and exists ‘in a free state’.