ARTIST STATEMENT
Inspired by the lingering effects of the Partition between India and Pakistan, my work conceptualizes borders, separation, and retaliation. I explore nature’s indifference to human conflicts and boundaries, and how it defies human control.
Growing up listening to my grandmother’s stories of the 1947 Partition, I realized that there was more history than what was taught to us in school. The evolving relationship to geography Post-Partition, formation of borders and their lingering emotional turmoil influences my work to a great extent.
My interdisciplinary artistic practice involves filming and photographing first-hand experiences at the India-Pakistan border and the surrounding farmlands. Using these photographs, I then eliminate the presence of physical fences by painting over them, dissolving borders, and envisioning a utopian landscape.
As an extension of this work, I grew a fondness of natural landscapes, and developed a fascination with soil. In the US, I found myself longing for the smell of rain from my grandmother’s garden. To replicate this experience far from home, on my subsequent visit, I brought Pakistani soil with me, molding it in sculptures which allowed them to pass border-control.
Since arriving in the US, my work has also started to focus on my experience as a diasporic person. While I encountered an intangible divide among the community, I also discovered that human emotion transcends boundaries, and despite differences, a shared affinity allows for meaningful connections.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sayera Anwar (b. 1995; Pakistan) lives and works in Chicago. She sees herself as a spectator and witness to life as it unfolds. In 2018, Anwar completed her Bachelor’s in Visual Arts from the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. In 2024, she finished her Master’s in Fine Arts from The Art Institute of Chicago, where she was granted the prestigious New Artist Society Merit Scholarship award. Her work is Interdisciplinary, where she explores the theme of home, borders, and otherness through her initial interest in the Pakistan-India Partition of 1947 and now within her diasporic experiences. In the past three years, Anwar has been nominated and selected for artist residencies, such as ‘Dūje Pāse toñ” (From the Other Side), commissioned by the South Asian Canadian Histories Association, and VASL’s annual artist residency – Taaza Tareen’13 in Karachi, Pakistan. Her work has been shown at the Full Circle Gallery in Karachi (2021), the SITE Gallery in Chicago (2023), and Convergence in Flux, South Asia Institute, Chicago (2024). Therefore, she believes that art is a critique of life. It is not just an object but a living practice that emerges once life is experienced thoughtfully and wholly with the mind, body, and soul.
© Sayera Anwar