Wardha Shabbir

Wardha Shabbir has graduated from National College of Arts with an honors in 2011, followed by the prestigious Principal Honor Award. Stemming from her personal interest in the myriad contradictions that inform human behaviour, the symbol of the path has become the focal point of some of Wardha’s recent work. The discourse surrounding predestination or fatalism as having influence over human lives, as opposed to personal choice being the catalyst for personal fates, is still an active one in the theology of Muslim culture. But while religious texts, or the widespread interpretations of these texts, incline towards a fatalistic view regarding human life, there exists at the same time the concept of choice – choosing right over wrong, eternal bliss over worldly and temporary comfort, self-sacrifice over self-centeredness. The path or “Siraat”, then, becomes a means of navigating oneself through the clutter of these possibilities. It becomes a course of clarity in the midst of contradictory values and states of being. The linearity of a path can also be the basis for a shape that can multiply and form a pattern. It thus implies the infinitude that is a part of all geometric developments in Islamic art. Wardha has been awarded with many scholarships, grants and was also selected for an exchange program in Paris, 2010 with ECOLE. She has been awarded the best young artist

Award from Al-Hamra Art Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan (2011). She has been the visiting faculty of National College Of Arts (NCA) since 2012. She was the first artist from Pakistan selected for Flacc, Belgium where she initiated a research-based experiment on human Sensorium while transforming a 2D miniature painting into 3D Interactive Environment. In 2016, she became part of the Summer Intensive Program at The Slade School of Fine Arts, London, UK. She has been part of Dhaka Art Summit, Scope, Basel; Contemporary Istanbul, Turkey; Delhi Contemporary Art Week, LATITUDE 28, New Delhi. Wardha has recently been shortlisted for the prestigious Jameel Art Prize 2018 of Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom; where her works were a part of the exhibitions and travelled to different museums for two years, she had fair booths at Abu Dhabi Art, Jameel Art Centre, Dubai and Alserkal Art Week (2020). She also had a solo exhibitions at Grosvenor Gallery, London, UK (2019) and Of Trees and other beings at Rohtas 2 Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan (2016).