About

Mahwish Chishty (b. 1980)

Mahwish Chishty combines new media and conceptual work with materials and techniques of South Asian art and craft traditions. Her work has been exhibited at the University of Technology Sydney Gallery in Australia; Boghossian Foundation–Villa Empain in Brussels; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City; Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in New York City; Imperial War Museum in London; and Gandhara Art Gallery in Karachi. Chishty's work is in public and private collections, including the Foreign Office in Islamabad; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka; and Imperial War Museum, London.

Chishty is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and other fellowships and awards. Artist residencies include Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York; Chicago Cultural Center; and Vermont Studio Center. She holds a BFA with a concentration in miniature painting from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan and an MFA in studio arts from the University of Maryland in College Park.

About my work:

My artistic research combines my interest in Pakistani traditional folk art/culture and contemporary politics as it relates to US/Pakistan relationship. Since 2011, I have been interested in border-related topics that arise from my personal experience of not belonging to one country or place. I was born in Lahore, Pakistan, grew up in Saudi Arabia, and now live in the United States. My artmaking process always begins with a trip to Pakistan, researching, and interacting with my surroundings and bringing that experience back into my studio in the US where I physically create the works that bring to light the complex cultural narratives and also questions my role in these two cultures. The Sindhu Project is an extension of this exploration while reminiscing on the pre-partition era and our current cultural affairs.

Artistically, my projects combine my training in Miniature painting (Mughal, Persian and Indian style) with an interest in South Asian and Pakistani folk arts, aesthetic forms and culture. I combine new media and conceptual work with materials and techniques of South Asian art and craft traditions and am interested in the interplay and tension between the concept and the imagery. The concept comes first as the media and technique become secondary but integral parts of communicating the ideas.