Nadia Waheed's figurative paintings draw from themes of womanhood, cultural identity, and the experience of growing up as a woman born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents.
Read MoreNadia Waheed was born in 1992 in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. She moved often as a child, living across continents and in cities like Paris and Cairo. Amid a feeling of perpetual displacement, Waheed spent her formative years using art as a form of expression and escape.
Waheed's family eventually settled in the United States when she was 12 years old. As a teen, she often drew and painted in sketchbooks and deemed her art the only place that belonged to herself, outside the social and cultural pressures of family and race.
Waheed attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, graduating with a BFA in Painting and Drawing in 2015.
Often self-portraits, Nadia Waheed's female subjects are rendered in earthy tones, amid dreamlike landscapes of dense jungles, mountainscapes, and vast stretches of water.
Waheed's paintings often focus on the conflicts and harmonies synonymous with multicultural heritage and the modern diasporic experience. Accordingly, her compositions render scenes that appear at once present and isolated.
Characterised by thin swathes of paint in vibrant hues, they depict female subjects surrounded by lush landscapes. The figures are imbued with an otherworldly aura from the artist's gentle use of paint, which lends a translucent quality to the work.
Waheed discussed her artistic process with Ocula Advisory in 2023. 'I begin with a rough drawing. I make sure it's aligned the way I want it to be on the canvas, choppily block it all in and then start fleshing it out. I paint quite thinly and layer a lot.'
Interpreted as a visual diary, 'I climb, I backtrack, I float' is a series Waheed made during the Covid-19 pandemic. Primarily autobiographical, these paintings consider the anxieties and uncertainties at the time while navigating a path to find peace.
In works like Message From Janus (Day One) and The First Three Months (Mountains) (both 2020), Waheed's figures tower over the surrounding landscape like colossal, God-like statues. Her grey-hued subjects stand out from the craggy landscape painted in exaggerated colours. Isolated and alone, they 'see everything and nothing at once'.
Waheed's 'Heavy Bend' series meditates on the tensions the artist experiences between her commitment to painting and the burden of care often assigned to women, contextualised by her South Asian background and its collective conscience.
In solar power (2022), nude women float in 'celestial landscapes' with luminous strokes of vivid greens and golden yellows. Intended as a visual interpretation of the artist's spiritual journey, viewers are invited into a world of surreal scenes steeped in emotion.
Nadia Waheed has spoken at panels and artist talks around the world, including at SoHo Beach House Miami in 2020 and Women & Their Work Gallery in Austin in 2019.
Nadia Waheed has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions across North America, Europe, the U.K., Asia, and Australia.
Select solo exhibitions include Gallery 1957, London (2022); Arsenal Contemporary Art, New York (2021); Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami (2020); BEERS London; The Museum of Human Achievement, Austin (both 2019); and Bolm Studios, Austin (2018).
Selected group exhibitions include Galerie LJ, Paris (2023); Alexander Berggruen, New York; Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles; Gallery 1957, London; Lyles & King, New York (all 2022); Aicon Gallery, New York; 1969 Gallery, New York (both 2021); Patel Gallery, Toronto (2020); and Bellevue Arts Museum, Seattle (2019).
The artist lives and works in Austin, United States.
Nadia Waheed's website can be found here, her Instagram is here.
Phoebe Bradford | Ocula | 2023
