Sobia Ahmad | Silver Spring, MD
wherever you are is called Here
Weaving and screen print on rice bags (2019)
This artwork comprises a series of “anti-flags,” which the artist describes as “projections of personal and communal belonging, rather than nations.” Using materials, weaving techniques, and images associated with her ancestral history, the artist reclaims the power in memory to create home. She asks, “What happens to nationalism, to political boundaries, when our allegiances lie with ancestral knowledge that knows no bounds?”
Does this artwork speak to you?
Sobia Ahmad
Sobia Ahmad graduated in 2016 with Honors from the Bachelor’s in Studio Art Program at the University of Maryland College Park. Her work has been reviewed in several major publications such as Al Jazeera English, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post and has been included in multiple collections. She has exhibited internationally—including at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York, Queen Mary University in London, and the Women Filmmakers Festival at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC.
Ahmad received a Vermont Studio Center fellowship award in 2018, was the 2019 recipient of the Next Generation/Sanctuary Artist Fellowship at VisArts in Maryland, and is a 2019-2020 Halcyon Arts Lab Fellow in Washington DC.