Fictionalising the Moment
- The Aleph Review
- 15 hours ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 20 minutes ago
Mehvash Amin
Ajea Zahid, a successful young painter, explains the constructs of her artistic universe. Zahid is a graduate from the National College of Arts, Lahore. She has exhibited her work nationally at the VM Art Gallery, Tanzara Gallery, Numaish Gah, Tagh’eer Creative Space, Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery, Galley6, Ejaz Art Gallery, and O ArtSpace as well as internationally in Dubai, London, Oman and India. Ajea has also worked as a member of Our Shared Cultural Heritage —A youth-led program exploring the shared cultures and histories of the UK and South Asia. This month, a solo exhibit of her work was displayed at Numaish Gah Gallery, Lahore.
Your work explores how “intimate spaces and mundane routines become structures
of control and where resistance unfolds.” So, your work, which at first glance looks
like simple portraiture and still lives, has a deeper meaning. Is there a story shaping a
narrative in every work—or is your work a mixture of studies drawn from the
quotidien, along with works that have a deeper meaning?
So, on the surface my work does often takes form through portraiture or still life-like scenes but they aren’t meant to be literal studies of the everyday settings. For me, the quotidian is never neutral, it always carries layers of memory, emotion, and subtle power dynamics. So even when I’m painting something as ordinary as a sofa, a window, or a figure in repose, I’m interested in how these images can suggest something larger.
This approach developed as I began thinking critically about representations of domesticity and gender in both art history and contemporary visual culture. As I was developing this approach, I was focusing on how people inhabit domestic spaces in ways that feel almost ungraded. At the time, I was also engaging with ideas of genderedness and how intimacy and fragility can exist within spaces that are usually coded differently. But rather than making this overt, I became more interested in exploring it in subtle ways through re-framing or fictionalising moments so that they speak more universally
Your work is done with loose brushstrokes, and conjure up some Impressionist and
post-Impressionist paintings. Which artists from that era do you feel have shaped
your work?
I definitely draw a lot from Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters especially in terms of their attention to atmosphere in their paintings. there’s Monet, his Rouen Cathedrals were one of my many first loves in painting. I admire how he could return to one subject again and again and each time observing the change of light. Then there is Van Gogh , who came later but stayed the longest… the most remarkable thing of his paintings is how the fluid brushstrokes are still visible despite the thick layer of relief colouring. His paintings seem dreamy and magical, they are amazing.
Then there’s also Bonnard and Soutine and Cezanne and Munch and many more that I’m consuming visually everday.
You also mentioned that you were influenced by the work of Salman Toor. I feel that
though his early works might have been an influence, he has gone in another
direction as far as themes and style go. Are you influenced by his most recent work?
Any other Pakistani art influences?
So, back in my undergraduate years, I was working as an illustrator/concept artist alongside painting. With illustration, there’s always a degree of exaggeration involved. You highlight or stretch certain features or fictionalize a character to really bring them to life, but my paintings leaned more towards structured, somewhat realistic forms. It felt like a very different language from my more illustrative ‘style’— I didn’t quite know how to bridge the two.
But then, during my undergrad thesis, I found myself looking at artists who approached the figure with a kind of looseness that pushed against strict realism. Around that time, I came across Salman Toor. The fluidity in his work and the whimsy his figures possessed was quite interesting. I was also looking at a lot of Matt Bollinger at the same time.
And I think it gave me the confidence to really explore and incorporate my own visual languages together, something that I was hesitant of doing before.
That said, my influences also stretch into Pakistani artists, I’ve always looked up at the older generations of Pakistani painters who worked with the figure in a very direct and uncompromising like Colin David and his unflinching treatment of the body. In more contemporary times, I admire the works of Suliman Khilji, Sara Khan and Zaam Arif a lot.
Tell us why you return to scenes of domestic familiarity.
I think my return to scenes of domestic familiarity comes from the fact that growing up, I moved from place to place quite often. Home was never been a fixed place, it was constantly shifting. And yet within all of that change there were always certain constants—tables, chairs, the way people gathered, the small rituals of being together indoors. They’re so ordinary that you’ll only notice them once they slip away and that, for me, became an anchor.
When I paint them now, I’m not just looking at the room itself but at the feeling of what it means to belong or to hold on to something that remains steady even when the world around it is in flux. Domesticity, in that sense, isn’t static, it carries memory, intimacy, and traces of how people relate to one another.
So I keep circling back to it because these spaces feel like repositories of my own shifting past and painting them allows me to map a sense of continuity where once there was constant change.
You tell us yourself that some of your faces are blurred so that a viewer can find
themselves in the incomplete portraiture. Talk a bit more about this.
For me, the decision to leave faces with a certain abstraction comes from a desire to open up the work and let others step into it. I’ve always cherished it when people tell me that a painting reminded them of someone they loved—maybe a father, a brother or a sister.
There’s one piece of mine with two older figures titled ‘Us When We’re Old’. A stranger once told me that it reminded him of his late partner and the long years he had spent with her. To him, it felt as though she had returned to him, if only for a moment. And I thought that was beautiful, I think I was really moved by that.
it reminded me that paintings can hold memory in ways words sometimes can’t. When the faces are blurred, they stop being just portraits: they become a vessel for longing, for grief, for love. I think that’s what keeps me drawn to this gesture the idea that an incomplete face can be complete only in the eyes of someone who sees their own story reflected back.
I want to ask about your craft… do you have sitters or do you take multiple photos to
work from at your ease?
I don’t usually work with sitters in the traditional sense. I tend to rely on my own sketches and photographs that I take. They’re very spontaneous, I’ll always have my sketchbook on me— I’m not out hunting for the perfect reference but just something that captures the essence of the moment. The photographs don’t need to be polished, and my sketches don’t need to be fully formed. They’re quick, instinctive marks that tell me I’ve caught the ‘feeling’ of the moment.
In fact, I find that if I overwork or make the reference too self-conscious, I start to lose the immediacy of the moment. So, for me, a reference is never meant to dictate the painting. It’s just a tread tto hold onto until the work starts to shift and take on its own life
How long does it normally take you to complete a work? Do you have a set routine
where you, say, give a certain number of hours to your painting? Or is it more of an
inspirational release?
So, inspiration is something I try to make space for—through discipline. Credit goes to my Abba who has been an incredibly disciplined man his whole life.
I don’t have a very strict routine, but I have a very strict idea of making sure I give time to my practice, whether it is a couple of minutes or long hours in the studio. But every day is a conscious effort of showing up consistently. If I’m not actively painting, I’m still engaging with the work through reading, films, or consuming different kinds of media. I see all of that as part of the process, as ways of drawing inspiration from different forms of art and feeding it back into my own practice.
In terms of pace, it’s never fixed. Some works come together very quickly as if they already knew what they wanted to be. Others stretch over days or weeks, And then, of course, there are pieces that never quite see the light of day, but it’s part of the rhythm of practice.
For me, the quotidian is never neutral, it always carries layers of memory, emotion, and subtle power dynamics
For such a young person, you have exhibited widely and your work has become
extremely popular and presumably, lucrative. A very honest question: Do you feel
that this might impede your progress as an artist?
It’s something I think about often. Success can be a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it’s affirming to know that people connect with the work, but on the other, I never want that external validation to dictate the direction I take. I try to remind myself that the journey of an artist is a long one, and I’m still very much at the beginning. What matters most is staying curious, pushing myself into uncomfortable spaces and not becoming complacent. If anything, the recognition makes me want to hold myself more accountable, to keep growing and evolving rather than settling into what feels comfortable.
Please tell us about your immediate plans for the future.
Right now my focus is on deepening and expanding upon the work itself. I want to push certain ideas further, refine the way I handle painting and continue experimenting with how my drawings and paintings speak to one another. In the short term, it’s about staying consistent in the studio by producing new bodies of work and learning through them.
Is going abroad for further studies in art or a residency part of your plans?
Definitely, I’ll be moving to London soon for my postgraduate studies, which I see as both an academic stimulus and a chance to immerse myself in a very different art community. I want to use this time to expand the language of my practice, to experiment freely and to be in dialogue with artists from all over the world. I believe stepping outside of familiar environments is always essential for both personal and the growth of my work and yes, I’m excited about all the opportunities that being in a different country will bring.
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