Mariya Shaikh

Braille—a tactile system through which blind and low-vision readers encounter language by touch—offers Mariya Shaikh a powerful way of thinking about how meaning can exist beyond the eye. Just as Braille transforms language into touch, abstraction allows a painting to be felt before it is understood. Colour, mark, texture, and repetition become a quiet vocabulary, an invitation to encounter what may not always be seen, but can still be sensed and known.

Based in Sindh, Pakistan, Mariya Shaikh is a visual artist, researcher, and educator whose practice moves between painting, drawing, and textile-informed abstraction. At the heart of her work is an ongoing question: What is grace? She understands grace as a form of attention—a quiet meeting point between memory, spirituality, material, and lived experience.

Rooted in the craft heritage of Sindh, Shaikh’s paintings evolve through layered pigment, repetition, hand-made marks, and shifting surfaces. She is drawn to the capacity of a surface to hold time: a gesture can carry a memory, a place, a trace of touch, or a feeling that resists language. Her works often hover between landscape, textile, and script, creating spaces that feel both intimate and expansive.

In her recent Braille-...

MA/MPhil in Art Education — First Division
Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan
2021–2023

Focus: Art Education, Curriculum Development, Pedagogical Strategies, and Design Research.

Bachelor of Design in Textile Design — First Division with Distinction
University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan
2012–2015

Graduated with the highest marks in the program.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS, RESIDENCIES & RECOGNITION

Upcoming
2027 — XVI Florence Biennale, Florence, Italy

2026
Upcoming Group Exhibition, MUSE Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan

2026
Textile Junction, United Kingdom

2025–2026
Art South Asia Project (ASAP), Assembling Art Archive, Hong Kong

2025
Artist Residency, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, USA
Sahar-e-Tabinda, 4th International Islamic Art Festival, PUCAD, Lahore
Dispositions of Being, Haam Gallery, Lahore
Collector’s Choice Award, Anja Park Interior Design Studio, Harvard Square, USA

2024
A Culture of Care, AAN Art Space & Museum, Karachi
Burgeoning Icons, Gallery 6, Islamabad
Art in Flux, Art Scene Gallery, Karachi
Barsaat, Lakir Art Gallery, Lahore

2023
Views with a Difference, Full Circle Art Gallery, Karachi
A Fabulous Talent, Ejaz Art Gallery, Lahore
Arjumand Painting Award Exhibition, Alhamra Art Council, Lahore

2022
8th Geoje International Art Festival: Axis of Peace, Haegeumgang Theme Museum, South Korea
Well Come Back Home, Koel Gallery, Karachi
2 x 2 Equals to Five, Art One 62 Gallery, Karachi

2021
Transcendentalism, VM Art Gallery, Karachi
7th Geoje International Art Festival, South Korea

2017
TEAR or RUST, Samma Art Gallery, Calgary, Canada

2015
World...