'The Garden' of self-discovery

When Brooklyn-based Pakistani artist Hiba Schahbaz paints, the boundaries between memory, mythology, and the female body blur into something at once intimate and otherworldly, according to a report by Vogue.

Her latest exhibition, 'Hiba Schahbaz: The Garden', now open at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, marks her first solo museum show and brings together more than 70 works that trace her journey from Karachi's quiet bedrooms to the walls of an American museum.

The exhibition, curated by Jasmine Wahi, unfolds like a visual poem built around four elements — earth, air, fire, and water. Wahi describes it as a "magical garden, a space of transformation, imagination, and renewal". It's an apt metaphor for an artist who has long used art to cultivate an inner world that defies constraints — geographic, cultural, and bodily.

At the heart of the exhibition is 'The Guard (2015-2025)', a luminous miniature painting where a nude angel rises through rose-coloured walls surrounded by delicate dragons exhaling trails of gold. Around her, a court of female guards stands watch in solemn symmetry, their gaze steady, their presence protective.

The painting exemplifies Schahbaz's mastery of miniature art — a discipline she first encountered as a student at Lahore's National College of Arts, where she trained in the Indo-Persian style known for its exacting precision.

"The second I started painting miniatures in school, something just clicked," she recalls. "We made our own brushes and paper, spent a week drawing tiny lines. There was so much ritual to it — it felt like coming home."

That ritual began years earlier, under a blanket in Karachi, where a young Schahbaz sketched tiny figures by torchlight. Her fascination with the human form — and later, with her own likeness — grew from the restrictions she faced.

"I spent a lot of time indoors," she says. "There was a huge mirror in my room, and since we didn't have nude models, I learned by drawing myself." This early intimacy with self-portraiture evolved into one of her defining artistic signatures.

At the Miami exhibition, life-sized self-portraits appear in 'Rebirth (2025)', a panoramic 270-degree installation created for the museum, where Schahbaz's painted figures embody each of the four natural elements.

Nearby, 'Mermaid Room (2025)' transforms the gallery into a dreamscape of human-sized mermaids, dragons, and flowers, blurring the line between myth and autobiography.

"Miniature painting is physically demanding," Schahbaz admits. "It strains your eyes and wrists. Working large-scale was a way of freeing myself - of giving my figures more room to breathe."

That shift began after she moved to the United States in 2010, a relocation that expanded both her technique and perspective. Yet even as her canvases grew, she continued to use the same materials - water-based pigments and, most distinctively, tea.

"Tea is part of our culture," she explains. "It's ritualistic, comforting, and when you paint with it, it gives off this familiar scent. No brown pigment compares - it feels alive."

The result is evident in works like 'The Gathering (2018)', where nude female figures, all self-portraits, appear bathed in soft tea tones against a deep crimson background. They gaze outward, confronting the viewer with quiet defiance.

The use of tea, both literal and symbolic, anchors her practice in South Asian traditions while reclaiming the nude form - historically taboo in the region - as a site of agency and spirituality.

Wahi notes that Schahbaz's recurring symbols — lilies, jasmine, dragons, mermaids, lions, and unicorns — have become visual anchors of her artistic universe. "These elements evolved naturally in her work," she says. "They embody protection, power, and femininity. "

Schahbaz sees these motifs as more than decorative. "The dragons feel protective," she says. "They channel the energy around the female figure, while the lion represents love."

Her figures, too, often emerge intuitively, led by what she calls a shared consciousness. "We're all receiving the same messages," she says. "All we can do is stay open and decide which ones to act on."

The sense of spirituality that runs through her art is as much about creation as it is about healing. Schahbaz's paintings — layered with gold leaf, translucent washes, and recurring symbols — transform vulnerability into resilience. Her women are not idealised muses; they are guardians of their own worlds.

In Miami, her 'Garden' invites visitors into that liberated space. Moving through its sections, one feels the quiet pull of her Karachi nights, the intensity of Lahore's studios, and the expansive light of her Brooklyn workshop.

It is a world where the sacred and sensual coexist — where myth and memory meet in delicate strokes of tea and gold. 'Hiba Schahbaz: The Garden' runs from November 5 to March 16, 2026, at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami.