About the artists

Sophia Balagamwala (b. 1987, Karachi, Pakistan) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Karachi. Her practice merges real and fabricated events to explore questions of nationhood, histories, and the museum complex in South Asia. Balagamwala has a B.A. from the University of Toronto (2010) and an MFA from Cornell University (2014). She has previously worked as the Lead Curator of the National History Museum in Lahore, and is currently an advisor for the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP). In 2021 she was awarded the London, Asia, Art, Worlds artist commission by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. In 2021/2022, Balagamwala was

awarded the Art South Asia Project (ASAP) /British Council grant for her artist research project Inventing the Nation, which is to be published next year. Balagamwala curates a collection of local artist publications under the Kurachee Reading Room, housed previously at the COMO Museum in Lahore, (2021-2022), and currently at the AAN Ideas LAB (ArtSpace&Museum) in Karachi. She teaches at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. 

Noormah Jamal (b. 1992, Peshawar, Pakistan) is a Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist. She graduated from the National College of Arts Lahore in 2016, majoring in Mughal Miniature Painting and earned her Masters in Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute, New York in 2023. Her work centers around identity and the personal baggage that people carry. Her image-making and sculptures are deeply rooted in the oral histories of her people and family. Some of her notable exhibitions include Space in Time at Rietberg Museum in Switzerland and Canvas Gallery Karachi (2019); Sites of Ruin at Twelve Gates Gallery, Philadelphia (2022) and Poetics of Relatability at Aicon Contemporary, New York (2024). Her work has been featured in various publications and media including Hyperallergic, The Herald, The News Pakistan, The Karachi Collective and the Aleph Review. She was an artist in residence at VASL Karachi, for the Taaza Tareen 2019 cycle and was awarded the Imran Mir Art Prize in 2019. Currently she is a member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program,New York and is an artist-in-residence with the Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York and ProjectArt, New York. 

Hardeep Pandhal (b. 1985, Birmingham, U.K.) works predominantly with drawing and voice to transform feelings of disinheritance and disaffection into generative spaces that bolster interdependence and self-belief. Applying practices of associative thinking, his wide-ranging practice exhibits syncretic strains of post-brown weirdness. Across media, his works are imbued with acerbity and playful complexity; at once confrontational and reflective. Hardeep Pandhal is based in Glasgow His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including, most recently: The New Art Gallery Walsall (2023); British Art Show 9, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Aberdeen (2021-22); Goldsmiths Centre of Contemporary Art (2020); Tramway, Glasgow (2020); New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2019); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2019); South London Gallery, London (2018); New Museum, New York (2018); Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2018); Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2017); Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2016). Pandhal’s work is part of a number of prestigious public collections, including Arts Council Collection, UK; British Council Collection, UK; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow. He was shortlisted for the Jarman Award (2018) and selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2013). 

Jagdeep Raina (b. 1991, Guelph, Ontario, Canada) has an interdisciplinary practice that spans textile, drawing, writing, ceramics, 35mm film and video animation. Raina utilizes the archive in order to explore historical memory. His multimedia practice seeks to identify the residue left behind by the human touch, and its restorative potential. He lives and works in Queens, New York City, USA.