Specimen 2.8

Graphite on acid-free paper

11 x 8.3 in.

Specimen 2.8 was created for Coincide, a group exhibition held at Art Chowk gallery, Karachi, curated by Faizan Riedinger, exploring the minimalism and detail, pattern and intricacy.

My work explores belonging and unbelonging through fluid, organic forms that borrow from images of tangled flora- sinuous, pulsating- sprawled in dense arrangements over imagined lands. The fiction of Specimen 2.8 unfolds here, in the tension between untrammelled growth and confinement, between endless, rhythmic movement, and an all-encompassing stillness. Through this imagined space I reflect on complicated homes that nurture and stifle, that are capacious yet suffocating. The longing for movement and mobility, and the inability to sustain them is expressed through slow, controlled marks that travel across the page and halt in synchronized anxiety. Specimen 2.8 is a self-portrait and confession, observed, prodded, dissected, and ultimately put on display.