Haya Zaidi: Up Against

Haya Zaidi (b. 1993) is a Karachi-based multidisciplinary artist working at the convergence of Indo-Persian miniature painting, mixed media, and feminist discourse. Her practice examines how the brown female body becomes a contested site of inheritance, mythology, and resistance, grounded in the visual and literary lineages of South Asia. Zaidi constructs intricate compositions through tracing, cutting, collage, and assemblage, integrating miniature painted surfaces with textiles collected from tailoring processes and garments belonging to women in her community. These fabric fragments carry the imprint of touch and lived experience, enabling her to move through collective memory and give form to stories of South Asian women navigating generations of constraints. Her work draws inspiration from classical narratives including Gulshan-i 'Ishq, Madhumalati, and Hamzanama, reimagining the monstrous figures in these manuscripts as whimsical, cartoonlike presences that coexist with rather than threaten her protagonists. Through this deliberate transformation, Zaidi proposes that confronted fears lose their power, and she positions women as self-determined participants whose calm, surrendered presence embodies quiet authority.