About
Sobia Ahmad's interdisciplinary practice maps how the personal and the political intersect. By weaving personal and communal narratives with current and historical socio-political contexts, she highlights the inseparability of the self and larger power structures. The work poses questions like: What confirms or dissipates our sense of belonging? What effects do policies have on our individual and collective psyches? And how can our deeply intimate struggles of belonging inform larger conversations about national identity, notions of home, cultural memory, and gender?
Born and raised in Pakistan, Sobia Ahmad moved to the United States at the age of fourteen. She graduated 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 Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, New York), Craft Contemporary (Los Angeles), Queen Mary University (London), Museum of Craft and Design (San Francisco), and the Women Filmmakers Festival at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.). Ahmad's recent achievements include the Wherewithal Research Grant by the Andy Warhol Foundation & the Washington Project for the Arts (2020-2021), a socially-engaged fellowship at Halcyon Arts Lab (2019-2020), and a solo exhibition at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington D.C. (2019).