About

What does it mean to embrace an art practice centered on always “becoming” ? For me this means recognizing that – in this – art is like the world around us: always in flux. Of transformation; of evolution; an unceasing process of healing from displacement and trauma; of resurrecting a future from the ruins of the past; of reuniting fragmented parts of oneself. Personally, as an artist; as a people, and as the earth seeks continually to heal itself.

In Urdu, the same word is used for ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ (کل | kul). Time fundamentally differs from the Eurocentric ‘temporal imaginary’ as linear, tautological and empirical. In contrast, kul reveals a temporal sensibility that is fluid: future and past coalesce. Time is not measured in a linear way but formed in the fluid space between—between people, between human and nonhuman energies—not individual but shared. As an immigrant to the US, I too live profoundly in-between. Multilinear time acknowledges trauma and the destruction of lands and transforms them into new landscapes. My practice is about rebuilding a future from the wreckages of the past, the process entails a radical dissolution—even of my own artwork—to manifest transformation; to manifest connection. As an immigrant, community and belonging are not static, but a process of continually engaging. Connection with the earth. With the energy and rhythms of creation—our place in the cosmos as part of greater consciousness.

My practice positions immersive art as a conduit to make tangible transformative encounters with the earth. I confront the ‘nature gap’ experienced in marginalized communities: the effects of (dis)connection with the earth. My current work rests at the intersection of contested land, eco-therapy, and personal narrative. Employing eco-therapeutic principles in service of community healing, my installations create an eco-art-therapy fusion. I engage themes of displacement and renewal, communal healing, and above all: the sublime, restorative potential of nature. Sacred Geometry fused with and revealed in natural recurring patterns—earthly, human, celestial—expose cosmic interconnectedness. Broken parts, reformed literally and spiritually, create new unified wholes, transcending into higher states of being, connecting with the spiritual energies within us and in the cosmos.

As an immigrant I act as a facilitator in my adopted home, illuminating profound connections among communities across cultures and seemingly disparate communities displaced globally. Asking how we might relate to the land outside colonial, capitalist modes of living—a future of belonging with the earth, outside territorial possession, or land extraction, but in mutual care. My work builds on years of engagement with the natural world. My installations draw on my transnational artistic roots to offer regenerative spaces, transcending boundaries of culture and place.

Patterns rooted in Sacred Geometric theory and Islamic art fuse with the earth’s recurring forms, exposing the interconnectedness underlying our existence. Countering the social and environmental upheaval that shapes our current landscape, my aesthetic sanctuaries provide sites for wonder, meditation, and peace. My work employs eco-therapeutic principles in service of community healing, engaging immersive experiences to forge restorative encounters with the land(scapes) of daily life. Recognizing that materials serve as repositories, concealing and preserving our history, I seek to create otherworldly spaces where time stands still and viewers are immersed in the rhythms of creation.

My interests in metaphysical cosmology, the spiritual within the material, and earth-centered healing has given rise to an interest in ritual practice tied to place. How can sacred ritual manifest embodied healing? How can art facilitate connection with our spiritual selves? I am especially interested in studying spiritual meanings associated with vernacular landscapes. Landscape as a concept writ large: physical, cultural, historical, personal. Moving through a landscape, one might discover the memories and energies embodied in animate and inanimate forms.

I investigate cosmic interconnectedness, through an exploration of sacred geometries both in the Islamic geometric patterns and the recurring patterns in the human body, the natural world, and cosmos. Melding biomorphic pattern from the natural world with geometric abstractions, extracting the basic building blocks of pattern from natural world and cosmos. This juxtaposition illuminates the oneness that underlies our existence. I probe the overlap between organic and human made patterns much as I critically examined the overlap of identities endemic to my immigrant experience.

Themes of displacement, identity and belonging, renewal and resurrection, cosmic interconnectedness illuminated through Sacred Geometry and recurring patterns in nature, human body, and cosmos, spirituality and healing with nature, reforming broken parts into new cosmologies, and making a place for oneself in the world after displacement and uprootedness lie at the heart of my practice. For me, ultimately, “community” and belonging are poetic states: their boundaries are unfixed and ever shifting.lie at the heart of my practice. I seek to merge acknowledgement of trauma with the faith and hope that a future can be rebuilt on the ruins of the past.

My 2020 installation, Cosmic Veils positioned the body of the viewer as a living support for patterns of shifting color and cast shadow filtered through intricate latticework, evoking celestial forms. In my work, nature offers an escape from the world’s seething chaos and uncertainty. The American Dream (2021) was housed in Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center. Installations of fabric marigolds at six discrete sites across the nature preserve, transfigured the space into natural shrines. The visit to each station through the forest embedded a walking meditation into the experience of viewership, implicitly inviting visitors to ‘forest bathe’ as a means of grappling with the violence of Tulsa’s 1921 Race Massacre. My 2022 Stories from the Core partnered with Oklahoma Public Libraries to bear witness to both the grief and the healing potential of the earth. Meditative prompts were paired with digitally altered photographs of Oklahoma’s extraordinary landscape to invite reflection. Printed on ‘art cards’ for visitors to take, Stories… thus expanded the artwork’s reach beyond traditional audiences. My international Unearthing Stories From The Core project, it examines racialized land displacement in marginalized regions in the US and Northern Pakistan. See Our Shadows, Our Wings, Alchemy of Disappearance & Acts of Disappearance.

Author Amy Rosenblum-Martín likens my emphasis on communal healing in at-risk communities to Audre Lorde’s assertion that “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” My art evolves from personal experience of healing from trauma and resurrecting life from the wreckage of the past. It embraces the notion that prioritizing self-care among people from socially suppressed populations is a radical act.

Sarah Ahmad

Bio

Ahmad’s artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, from Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum and OKPOP Museum; from Lahore Museum, Pakistan to Sharjah Museum of Art and the 1x1Art Gallery in UAE; the Asia Triennial in Manchester, UK; “Creativity in Quarantine: Women of the Pandemic,” in Washington, D.C. and Doha, Qatar; James Gallery, CUNY, NY and NARS Foundation, NY; Gallery 5, VA; the Irving Center of Arts, the LuminArte Gallery and the Eisenman Center in Dallas; the Koel Gallery in Karachi and Rohtas 2 Gallery in Lahore, Pakistan; the Delhi Contemporary Art Week, India; the Aicon Art Gallery Viewing Room in New York City; the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center and the Gaylord Pickens Museum in Oklahoma City; the Ahha Hardesty Arts Center and the University of Tulsa’s Alexandre Hogue Gallery in Tulsa,OK; the Forest Heritage Center Museum and the the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center in OK; the Tennessee Arts Commission Gallery in Nashville; Harvester Arts Center in Wichita, KS; ADC Fine Art in Cincinnati, OH; The Gallery at Watershed in Eugene, OR; the Yeiser Arts Center in Paducah, KY; the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art among others. Upcoming shows include “Across Common Grounds: Contemporary Art Outside the Center” at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine; and “The Day Promised” at Alhambra Arts Council, Lahore, Pakistan.

Ahmad’s public art projects were sponsored by the Regional One Hospital in Memphis; the Greenwood Art Project in Tulsa that was sponsored by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the City of Tulsa; the Metro Nashville Arts Commission; and the Tennessee Arts Commission among other institutions.

Sarah Ahmad has been interviewed by PBS News Hour, National Public Radio, the NPR station KWGS in Tulsa and KGOU in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Documentaries about her work are available on Google Arts and Culture, and in Emmy Award winning Gallery America’s episodes. She has been featured on the cover of OETA’s Odyssey magazine. Ahmad’s work has been reviewed in publications including Southwest Contemporary, ARTnews, and Gulf News. Her artwork has been featured in Bomb, Artnet News, USA Today, American Alliance of Museums, and Shahzad Bashir’s groundbreaking A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures [MIT, 2022]. And internationally in Gulf News, published in Dubai along with numerous publications in Pakistan including The News, Dawn, Herald, Friday Times, and Youline Magazine. Ahmad has given myriad artists talks, for example at Crowe Museum of Asian Art in Dallas and as an invited panelist at the 2022 South Asian Literature & Art Festival, Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Andy Warhol Foundation’ Thrive Grant, grants from the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, Virginia Center of Creative Arts 50th Anniversary Fellowship, BIPOC award for the International Thematic Residency, SOVERIGNTY at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and the US Fellowship at NARS Foundation, NY. She was selected for residencies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the Paducah Arts Alliance, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Otis College of Art and Design. In addition, Ahmad was a resident Tulsa Artist Fellow from 2019-2023.

Ahmad earned an MFA from the Memphis College of Art; an MA in Education from Union University; and a BA in Fine Arts from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan.

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