Painting

Matriarch is a portrait of my mother and a reflection on her role as a traditional Pakistani homemaker. The work celebrates her strength, assertiveness and resilience while recognising the emotional labour and sacrifices involved in creating a family home. Rather than presenting domesticity as passive, the painting considers the authority and endurance within women’s domestic roles and how their values and care shape subsequent generations.

Vatan, meaning homeland, reflects on migration and my family’s connection to their village in Azad Kashmir. Through the relationship between figures, landscape and animals, the painting considers memory, belonging and the ways connections to place continue across generations despite physical distance.

Homecoming is set in the courtyard of my family home in Azad Kashmir and explores migration, return and belonging. A father visiting from the UK photographs a moment with his UK-born child, while a cousin who remained in Pakistan stands within the scene. The figures dissolve into their surroundings while the mobile phone remains sharply defined, reflecting on how connections to place are carried across generations and how photographs become a means of preserving family memory.

Home is a self-portrait exploring nostalgia, longing and belonging in relation to my parents’ homeland in Azad Kashmir. Positioned above a bird’s-eye view of their village, I draw on memories of visiting during childhood and adolescence. The painting reflects an attachment to a place that feels both familiar and distant, and the tension between inherited ideas of home and my life in the UK.

Redemption explores personal growth, self-reflection and the possibility of healing through confronting the past. Clasped hands holding a rose emerge within the waters of Mangla Dam, while falling petals suggest release, purification and letting go. The painting considers redemption as an ongoing process of acknowledgement and transformation, reflecting on what we carry, what can be released and the search for inner peace.

Silence explores fragility, impermanence and introspection through a pink rose resting on a white pillow. The rose suggests the transient nature of life, while the pillow becomes a quiet space of rest and reflection. The painting considers vulnerability, stillness and the importance of finding moments of inner calm within everyday life.

Self Portrait with Flowers explores silence, solitude and introspection. Set in Brockwell Park, London, after Eid celebrations, I depict myself in Eid clothes with closed eyes, surrounded by flowers. The painting reflects on cultural identity, memory and the tension between private reflection and being observed.

Warrior is a portrait of my father, standing on our local town high street in Nottingham, the city where I was born, while wearing traditional Kashmiri clothing and armour. The work reflects his pride in his Kashmiri heritage and his desire to protect the values he held important. It considers masculinity, migration, cultural preservation and the ways ideas of belonging are carried across generations.

Relentless Tide reflects on the history of opium cultivation in India under British rule and the violence of colonial trade. Red poppies, interrupted by a single white poppy, drift across the water alongside a bomb and nails, while an isolated arm appears beside the British flag. The work considers exploitation, conflict and the human cost of colonial systems.