SHEHERBANO HUSAIN

Sheherbano Husain is an Islamabad-based artist and occasional art writer/curator from Karachi, with a penchant for depicting the metaphysical and the otherworldly through a visceral lens. Sheherbano completed her BFA in painting and printmaking from Indus Valley School of Art, Karachi, Pakistan. She has participated in art residencies and held several exhibitions of her work at home and abroad and was nominated for the Asian Sovereign Art Prize, Hong Kong, in 2011.

After a hiatus of nearly 5 years, Sheherbano re-emerged with her art practice. She was longlisted for the Hollybush Painting Prize in 2022, longlisted for the Visual Art Open Prize (2022 and 2023), longlisted for the Visual Artist Association Prize 2023, and shortlisted for the Visual Artist Association Scholarship Prize, 2023. She is a selected artist on the Artsinsquare Website and was also selected for Boomer Gallery, London’s Critic’s Spotlight 2023 and her work was reviewed by renowned art critic, Tabish Khan. My art practice has largely revolved around the self - the personal impacts the collective, making it imperative to know ourselves and look within, to create favourable conditions without. However this has become increasingly difficult over the years, with so many distractions and external stimuli. Our growing obsession with social media, gadgets, online news and entertainment, alienates us from our true nature and each other.

My intention is to create works that reinforce the idea of a single humanity and have a universal appeal. Favouring a narrative style, I choose to depict the metaphysical and the otherworldly through a visceral lens. Borrowing imagery from numerous sources, and drawing on both personal and collective memory, my influences range from esoteric traditions and mythology, to art history, cinema, music and world history. I have worked mainly in oils and mixed media, often incorporating photographs and photostats in my mixed media collages. In this new body of work, I created photo collages on paper, had them printed on canvas and then painted over and around them, using oils, inks and graphite.