10 Questions with Shazia Ahmad
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, to a Pakistani father and a Chilean mother, Shazia Ahmad’s practice and research interests are centered on the notions of home and belonging, tied to the broader theme of otherness due to her mixed-race interfaith background. Her practice comprises painting, printmaking, and handmade miniature dioramas. After a long break, in which she pursued other professional interests, she returned to fine art in 2016. Shazia graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts (Painting and Drawing major) from Concordia University in 2019 and was a finalist for the Prix Albert-Dumouchel in 2018. She was also awarded the Guido Molinari Prize in Studio Arts and Earl Pinchuk and Gary Blair Undergraduate Award while at Concordia. Shazia is the recipient of a 2019 Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create grant and has exhibited her work in Canada, the United States, and Spain. She has a previous double major undergraduate degree in Art History and History, and she completed her BTEC Foundation Diploma from Central Saint Martins in 1999. Shazia is currently the 2021-22 Don Wright Scholar at St. Michael’s Printshop in St. John’s, NL, Canada.
Shazia Ahmad Portrait
ARTIST STATEMENT
Memories are fragile things. The beginning of the story reveals a room of possessions. This chair has seen a variety of uses: bums, clothes, towel racks, history. The painting is a map of remembrances. These possessions, reminders of past journeys and experiences are cheap trinkets that grow in value over time. This cushion has been on many a bed, sofas, chairs, chewed on by many pets. Nostalgia makes it invaluable. What experiences are embodied by these objects? How do these spaces become home when filled with them?
My work speaks to the centrality of reminiscence and the passage of time as an accumulation of history. I chronicle journeys through time and place, paying tribute to intimate relationships that develop over the course of these passages. Thus, the concept of family transcends blood. Intimacy is expressed through character interactions in domestic settings. Born in Karachi, Pakistan to a Pakistani father and a Chilean mother, my practice and research interests are centered on the notions of home and belonging, tied to the broader theme of otherness due to my interfaith and unique mixed-race background. Moreover, I pay tribute to my Pakistani heritage by merging elements of the country’s material culture with personal imagery in my visual vocabulary. My practice comprises painting, printmaking, and domestic microcosms encapsulated in handmade dioramas.
Having a hybrid identity finds its manifestation in my work through the amalgamation of my color palette, patterns, and themes. Integral to my practice is the sumptuousness of Pakistani motifs, textiles, and carpets, domestic items that have surrounded me for the entirety of my life. My nuanced relationship to this identity is nostalgic, harking back to a past I try to hold on to as the memories of it recede. These remembrances are expressed through a vibrant limited color palette in reconstructed repetitive elements of both domestic interiors and exteriors. These works, very much about confinement during the pandemic, are also about reaching out to touch a past that can never exist again. There is not so much an absence as a yearning.
A Year, A Garden, A Feeling (COVID19 Diary) similarly to my past work, is personal and semi-autobiographical. It is my response to a pandemic that everyone has experienced at the same time, though not necessarily in the same way. Domesticity is integral to my practice; thus, my work serves as a continuous pandemic diary. My own exploration of where exactly I belong, straddling two different cultures and religions as I do, whilst living in a third culture, is something I continue to examine. More than a year of confinement has brought forth these themes in my work. Thus, I am memorializing the small things, the domestic details, the quiet moments that emerged in the horrific tragedy of the COVID19 pandemic. Moreover, this time has allowed me to experiment with vibrant, electric colors I have used separately throughout my oeuvre in one body of work.
Gateway (Nowhere but Here), gouache, acrylic, flashe and colouring pencil on plywood, 11” x 14”, 2021 © Shazia Ahmad
INTERVIEW
First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. You just recently came back to visual arts after pursuing different careers. What is your artistic background, and how did you become an artist?
My story starts as it does for many other artists in that I loved to draw as a child whilst living in Pakistan and was encouraged by my parents. I took art in high school as an elective, and by then, I knew I wanted to attend art school. I was accepted to Central Saint Martins for the 1-year Foundation diploma, which I completed in 1999. It is here that my story then diverges.
I ended up leaving visual art shortly thereafter for a multitude of reasons and studying arts and humanities instead, much to my father’s chagrin. My parents were already in Canada, so I attended McGill University. My father always thought I would pursue fine art and was disappointed when I told him I would not. I studied art history and history and then went on to other things professionally, only occasionally dabbling in some painting.
In 2013, my father was diagnosed with and succumbed to cancer, and so I ended up taking art classes in Toronto, where I was living at the time. It was while doing a Continuing Education certificate at OCADU that I was encouraged by my painting instructor, Michael Antkowiak, to consider getting a degree. I did not give it serious thought until I moved to Montreal to be with my mother in 2015 and then applied to Concordia, where I was fortunate to be accepted. I finished my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts in Spring 2019. I have not looked back since.
Approach (She is Fierce), flashe, gouache and colouring pencil on plywood, 16”x 20", 2021 © Shazia Ahmad
You have an interesting personal background with a unique blend of different cultures. How do these different influences reflect on your work?
Though I have a hybrid identity, I would say my dominant culture is Pakistani, since I was born and grew up there, I look Pakistani, and my name is Pakistani. This is reflected in my colour palette, which may be limited at the moment yet vibrancy has always been an essential part of my work. I grew up with sumptuous Pakistani textiles, including carpets, and when my parents moved to Canada, they decorated their home with carpets as well. So, I try to reflect that in my work. Bright colours and ornate fabrics remind me of home and that is what I try to recreate, especially as someone who is mixed race and living in a third culture.
My mother is Chilean so having a multicultural and interfaith background has actually given me a much wider perspective on the world as well. Her own gutsiness, for lack of a better term, moving to a foreign country to be with my father where the language and customs were different from her own, has been an inspiration to me as well. It is in keeping with her example that I am not afraid to take risks artistically. I hope to explore my Chilean roots more deeply once the pandemic ends and would be excited to see how that plays out in my future work.
What is your personal aim as an artist?
This will sound like a cliché, but I believe in living life to the absolute fullest and with no regrets. This is why I ended up leaving my full-time job and pursuing fine art by attending Concordia University. I recognize my privilege in being able to do this, and I am extremely thankful that I could. Thus, as an artist, I feel as if I am always reaching for something, whether it is a feeling or state of being, which is why I am constantly creating new work. My aim is to maintain this zeal, hone my craft and learn as I go along. Will I ever be completely satisfied? I think as artists we are not, yet I want to tell myself at least I tried my absolute best.
End of an Era (Not Enough Time), flashe, gesso, gouache and colouring pencil on Masonite, 16” x 20”, 2021 © Shazia Ahmad
Like A Wildflower (Respite), gouache, acrylic and colouring pencil on Arches, 10” x 14”, 2021 © Shazia Ahmad
In your series A Year, A Garden, A Feeling (COVID19 Diary), you offer the viewers intimate images of your confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Can you tell us about the genesis of this series?
During the first two months of the pandemic in 2020, when the entire world went into a simultaneous lockdown, I felt paralyzed and could not work at all. Then, around May 2020, I decided to try and be somewhat productive. I had stopped painting around 2018 as I felt it was not sustaining me artistically, focusing instead on printmaking and handmade dioramas, and though I did a little painting in 2019, it was sporadic.
In 2020, I took up painting, especially oil painting, again in earnest and decided to keep a lockdown diary inspired by my day-to-day. I was fortunate to be sheltering at home with my family and since domesticity is a huge part of my work, I found that I had inspiration constantly and painted daily for months on end. At that time, my two favourite elements were light and the colour cadmium yellow. I incorporated both into a series of paintings and watercolour monotypes I did and created one body of work. Then I switched to watercolour monotypes in January 2021, though this time I decided to work mostly with cobalt blue, magenta, fuchsia, and dioxazine purple. These are all colours I have used separately on occasion and both magenta and fuchsia are two of my favourites, yet they are not colours I use that often. I wanted to see how the palette would work with my subject matter and push me out of my comfort zone.
The paintings in the series mix dreamy colors and everyday objects. How did you come up with this style, and how would you define it?
Transforming the everyday into the epic is paramount to me; because of continuous lockdowns and pandemic restrictions in Montreal, I found myself working at home. As a result, I never ran out of subjects to paint since I take inspiration from my own life, and so even objects I had looked at for years suddenly looked different depending on the day, the light, and my own mood. Also, I have a nuanced relationship to my identity, a relationship which is nostalgic, harking back to a past I try to hold on to as my memories of it recede. So, these remembrances are expressed in reconstructed repetitive elements such as the same domestic interiors and objects painted in different lights on different days. I am reaching out to touch a past which can never exist again. There is not so much an absence as a yearning.
This current style actually did not start with painting, interestingly enough. I was making watercolour monotype prints at home, and hand-pulling them since I do not have a printing press, and it was there that I first experimented with cobalt blue and magenta. I ended up going over the dried monotypes with colouring pencil and from there got the idea to try this style in painting and drawing. The first works in A Year, A Garden, A Feeling (COVID19 Diary) were on paper as well, though I eventually moved to wood and Masonite panels because I liked the sturdiness of the support while I worked.
Whether I Do Or Not (Dream of the Future), gouache and colouring pencil on Arches, 10” x 14”, 2021 © Shazia Ahmad
Click of a Button (Unboxing), flashe, gesso, gouache and colouring pencil on wood panel, 18” x 24”, 2021 © Shazia Ahmad
Why do you use this visual language? And where did you get your imagery from?
I wanted to see how this combination of colours in a limited palette could translate to my imagery. Moreover, as I continued in this vein, I found it more intuitive and felt it communicated a deep sense of introspection, which is what confinement during Covid19 has been for me. While initially I may have been experimenting with colour, I found it created a mood that perhaps I had not anticipated when I started.
I find my daily life to be both a constant source of and motivation for my work. Home, domesticity, and family are integral themes for me, and these were reinforced during the pandemic. When I adopted this colour palette, I realised I could expand beyond my immediate domestic environment to include the outside, still keeping with daily life. The exterior works are images from my morning walks, which I adopted as part of my schedule during lockdowns, and seeing bridges and urban landscapes translated into this limited palette became integral as well.
Where do you find inspiration for your work?
Shahzia Sikander, Lisa Yuskavage, Jonas Wood, and Jules de Balincourt are big inspirations for me, as are my art school peers, many of whom are practicing artists as well. During the early days of the pandemic, when I was ‘doomscrolling’ on Instagram, I looked at a number of contemporary painters like Salman Toor, Hilary Pecis, Keiran Brennan-Hinton, Nikki Maloof, Rebecca Ness, Jenna Gribbon, Devin Shimoyama, Ga-Hee Park, and Brian Alfred. I was familiar with their work prior to the first lockdown, but the accessibility through Instagram meant I had a constant source of motivation that perhaps I would not have sought out otherwise.
Brian Alfred has an excellent podcast called Sound and Vision, which I listen to when I work. Hearing artists talk about their own work and journeys has been stimulating, especially during the more intense days of pandemic lockdown. Art is by far my biggest motivator but music is another and I also like listening to soundtracks while working. Sometimes, I will listen to soundtracks while formulating ideas and letting them coalesce.
What advice can you give to beginning artists?
Having no fear, which I realise is a sentiment easier said than practiced, is essential. To be honest, my work changed so much during the pandemic, and I rediscovered my love of painting and drawing because I decided to set aside fear and simply focus on working. This for me was multifaceted, a fear of failure, fear of rejection, and fear of simply never being good enough. Suddenly, I was laser-focused on what I wanted to do, whether or not anyone else ever saw the work. I had never made yellow paintings before and here I was doing just that. As I worked, I already had the next painting in my mind, and on and on this went. Moreover, even if what I was producing was unsuccessful, at least I had tried it and learned from it, so I could move on to the next thing. I also realised that I did not need permission to adopt a limited palette and that I had nothing to lose by doing it. I have now been working in this palette for ten months and am not slowing down.
Also, I recommend applying for as many opportunities to show your work as possible. There will be more rejections than acceptances, but keeping on and being productive is the most important thing. I am still learning this as an emerging artist and it has not deterred me. In fact, even the rejections have led to unanticipated opportunities down the line. As well, having a social media presence is paramount, since so many people are looking at art online while we are still in the pandemic.
Growing Together (Three Women), flashe, gesso, gouache and colouring pencil on Masonite, 20” x 24”, 2021 © Shazia Ahmad
Seasons (Three Women), flashe, gesso, gouache and colouring pencil on Masonite, 20” x 24”, 2021 © Shazia Ahmad
What do you think of the surge of digital exhibitions? Do you see them more as an opportunity or a threat?
I think digital exhibitions have been such a boon during the pandemic, especially because of restrictions. I was fortunate enough to be part of both online and in-person exhibitions between 2020 and 2021. I was also able to join a wider community of Canadian artists through Instagram because we exhibited our work together, even though we did not have a chance to meet in-person. I think the advantage of digital exhibitions is that they can reach a wider, more international audience.
Having said that though, personally, my feeling is that in-person exhibitions are still absolutely necessary and therefore irreplaceable. There are nuances in technique, execution, and scale that social media cannot really capture. When the first lockdown in Montreal was lifted in summer 2020, I was able to attend a number of gallery shows and being in the presence of art simply felt unrivalled.
Finally, what are your plans for 2021 and the future in general?
I actually left Montreal in late September 2021 for St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada’s most easterly province, for a one-year printmaking scholarship at St. Michael’s Printshop. I will be doing printmaking at the studio, probably in the form of screen-printing and lithography, as well as painting and drawing on my own. Moreover, my proposed residency project is in the vibrant limited palette of A Year, A Garden, A Feeling (COVID19 Diary) so I am excited to see how these colours will play out in a different medium and on a larger scale than I have been working in. I will be in St. John’s until at least September 2022.
My future plans include honing my skills as an artist and continuing to produce work. I feel I still have much to explore with this specific palette so I am excited to see what happens and where it goes. Hopefully in the future, I will attend a Master of Fine Arts program.
