About the Art

“To Belong Somewhere (?)” is a meditation on the multiplicity of places and languages within which many of us live today. The piece began intuitively, with a dense collage of torn pieces from old Arabic workbooks and a dictionary, used Urdu novels, and a great deal of scribbling in English. Built through a dance between layers and materials, from collage papers to paint, and paintbrush to pastels, obscuring and revealing marks, the painting has come to evoke liminal spaces of insight and hope. – Shumaila Ahmed

About the Artist

Shumaila Ahmed is a self-taught Pakistani British artist currently based in Dubai. Her mixed media art is an exploration of belonging and placemaking in a hypermobile world. Through her art practice, she seeks to enact an openness to mystery and potentiality. Her paintings emerge slowly through play and a mindful, embodied engagement with materials. Shumaila is also a sociocultural anthropologist with a doctorate from University of Cambridge.