HIBA SCHAHBAZ

Early years and Background

Hiba Schahbaz was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, where she grew up in a Muslim society with clearly defined gender roles that later informed her exploration of femininity and personal freedom in her art. She trained in Indo-Persian miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore, mastering a rigorous, centuries-old discipline before migrating to the United States.

After moving to New York, Schahbaz settled in Brooklyn and completed a Master of Fine Arts in painting at Pratt Institute. Exposure to Western painting and the New York art scene encouraged her to expand and experiment beyond traditional miniature formats, prompting a shift toward larger, more expansive work.

Hiba Schahbaz Artworks

Hiba Schahbaz’s artworks evolve from intimate Indo-Persian miniature painting to human-scale and monumental pieces that centre the nude female figure as a universal, timeless protagonist rather than a culturally fixed subject. Across her practice, she uses self-portraiture, mythic creatures, and imagined gardens to create spaces where women can reclaim their stories and histories within contemporary art.

Miniature painting foundations

Schahbaz’s early practice is rooted in the Mughal and Indo-Persian miniature painting tradition, with meticulous, layered washes of watercolour, gouache, and tea on handmade paper. This training emphasised ritual preparation of materials and disciplined mark-making, a meditative process that continues to underpin the precision and detail of her larger paintings.

Expansion to life-size figures

After relocating to Brooklyn, Schahbaz expanded her format from miniature scale to life-size works on paper and linen, often depicting nude female figures in pastel-toned, fantastical landscapes. She frequently references her own body, using self-portraiture to explore vulnerability, strength, sexuality, and personal narrative while challenging conventional representations of women in art history.

Series such as The Garden bring together women, animals, and hybrid creatures in enclosed, Edenic spaces that draw on South Asian art, Sufi poetry, and mythology. These compositions use colour, pattern, and symbolic flora to suggest sanctuary and psychological interiority rather than literal settings.

Materials and Recurring themes

Schahbaz is known for painting with black tea, watercolour, and water-based pigments on paper, alongside oil on linen, creating soft yet intense surfaces. Recurring themes across her work include femininity, censorship, body image, and personal freedom, articulated through figures that are both autobiographical and archetypal.

Select public projects and commissions by Hiba Schahbaz

• In My Heart, large-scale public art commission for Rockefeller Center with Art Production Fund, New York
• Garden mural and installations at Stoneleaf Retreat, New York State

Select Awards, Residencies, and Accolades

• Artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA, Massachusetts
• Artist-in-residence at The Wassaic Project, New York
• Artist-in-residence at Vermont Studio Center, Vermont
• Alfred Z. Solomon Residency at the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs
• Hiba Schahbaz’s work has been featured in publications including Vogue, Vice, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, and others.

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Hiba Schahbaz Exhibitions

Hiba Schahbaz has been the subject of solo exhibitions and included in group exhibitions at galleries and institutions in the United States and internationally. To be kept up to date with upcoming exhibitions featuring Hiba Schahbaz follow her on Ocula. You can also view her exhibitions on Ocula here.

Select solo exhibitions

• The Garden, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, North Miami, 2024–2025
• Love Songs, Almine Rech, London, 2023
• Magical Creatures, Adler Beatty, New York, 2024
• Garden, Stoneleaf Retreat, New York State, 2018
• The Garden, Spring/Break Art Show, New York, 2018
• Hiba Schahbaz: Self-Portraits, Project for Empty Space, Newark, 2017
• Hanged With Roses, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, 2016
• In Memory, Noire Gallery, Turin, 2015

Select group exhibitions

• Exhibitions at ICA Miami, Miami, including exhibitions in the early 2020s (for example, 2021–2022 programmes featuring Hiba Schahbaz)
• Exhibitions with Jeffrey Deitch, New York / Los Angeles, 2019–2021
• Exhibitions at Almine Rech, including presentations in London and other locations, from 2020 onwards
• Participation in FIAC art fair, Paris, 2019
• Group shows highlighted by institutional partners and non-profit spaces across the United States and Europe, 2010s–2020s (see full rolling list by year)

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Ocula | 2025