All Roads Lead to Home: A Dialogue on Crystals, Nostalgia, and Coming Full Circle
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Usman Ahmed
The co-curator of Sara Shakeel’s new solo show at Tanzara Gallery in Islamabad writes about the philosophy and journey behind the exhibition.
Setting up a Sara Shakeel show comes with a very specific, joyful kind of chaos. As a curator, my mind automatically goes to structural flow, spatial balance, and sightlines. Sara, on the other hand, walks in with one clear priority: can we make this room shine so bright people can see it three blocks away?
Co-curating her first solo show at Tanzara Gallery, All Roads Lead to Home, meant negotiating that exact friction: balancing structural restraint with pure, unapologetic maximalism. After an extraordinarily successful run showing internationally, Sara wanted to bring her practice back home. There was no better place to start than her home base of Islamabad, offering this exhibition as a tribute to the city that raised her. Conceived as an ambitious retrospective, the exhibition spanned her full practice from 2016 to the present. Bringing together her early digital collages, tactile glitter pieces, her celebrated Stretch Marks series, recent AI explorations, and signature crystal works allowed visitors to trace firsthand how her art evolved from backlit smartphone screens into multi layered physical spaces. It offered a nostalgic journey, giving the local audience an unprecedented look at the true scale and heart of her artistic growth.
None of this ambition would have materialized without Noshi Qadir, the owner and director of Tanzara Gallery. From day one, Noshi was an extraordinary ally, offering complete creative freedom and backing every radical idea we brought to the table. Whether it was navigating complex lighting setups or reconfiguring the gallery space to accommodate our unconventional Mercury installation, her immediate response was always, "Whatever it takes to make this show brilliant, we will do it." She gave us total trust and provided every resource required to execute our vision without compromise, ensuring that the gallery could be transformed into a truly dynamic light trap.
The highlight of this curatorial collaboration was acquiring and staging Mercury from Sara's ambitious The Jewel System, a landmark series reimagining the solar system through the collective labour of over 80 artisans, 40 million hand stitches, and 3.9 million vintage crystals. Within this cosmology, Mercury stands as a traveler, a messenger, and a carrier of knowledge across civilizations, seamlessly blending Greco-Roman caducei, Mesopotamian lore, and South Asian Hindu cosmology (Budha). On its sculpted surface, vast impact craters are reinterpreted through centuries-old Pakistani embroidery traditions as Shamsa, the radiant sunburst medallions found in illuminated Mughal manuscripts. Here, the language of astronomy meets the language of traditional ornament, where physical damage becomes decoration, and a planetary scar transforms into something luminous.
To house Mercury properly, we transformed an entire dedicated room into a total, seamless void. We draped the walls and ceiling in heavy black fabric and laid deep black carpet across the floor so that every physical corner and boundary entirely dissolved. Positioned directly in the center of this absolute darkness, resting on its custom stand, Mercury anchored the space like an isolated celestial body. Focused gallery spotlights caught its intricate crystal and embroidered surface, allowing it to radiate intensely across the pitch-black expanse and giving viewers the sensation of stepping directly into deep space.
Setting that dark, quiet room beside the vibrant energy of her ten-year retrospective gave the exhibition its natural flow. It let visitors drift between high-wattage wonder and quiet moments of thought. While the show was an immediate celebration of crystal and light, look a little closer and you see the shine is never just decorative. For Sara, sparkle is a form of healing: a way of honouring old scars, elevating everyday objects, and making personal memories feel lasting and real.
In the end, All Roads Lead to Home showed us that art doesn't have to feel distant, cold, or quiet to move people. Working alongside Sara and Noshi reminded me of what happens when you build something with total trust: the gallery stopped feeling like four white walls and became a space full of life, light and real feeling. It proved that honouring where we come from isn't just about looking back, it's about celebrating every piece of the journey along the way.
Usman Ahmed is an independent curator and art advisor based in Islamabad, Pakistan. He works across contemporary art, exhibitions, and cultural collaborations, curating shows and representing artists locally and internationally.
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