Humaira Abid

Humaira Abid is Pakistan born American artist working with sculpture and miniature painting. Her work challenges women’s roles in Asian and Middle Eastern culture, and pushes the boundaries of taboo in society. With her unique cross-cultural perspective, Abid aims to re-examine the way we see everyday objects, allowing for conversation and stories to unfold around subjects that are often buried under the surface. More Info

A majority of your work centers around issues that are considered taboo or uncomfortable. How do you think your work has helped you and your audience reconsider certain topics by confronting them through art?

HOW HAS YOUR WORK BEEN RECEIVED BY MORE CONSERVATIVE PEOPLE? Does this way of engaging these issues help them better understand your perspective?

Can you talk a bit about the “Tempting Eyes’ series and how that project came to be?

Is there a particular significance of having your "Tempting Eyes" piece on a billboard?

What drew you towards this specific combination of sculpture and painting?

Is there a reason you are drawn to continually using wood as a medium to create such impeccable recreations of seemingly ordinary objects in what seems like the most challenging ways? Why go through this scrupulous process to create these “ordinary” objects? How long do these more ambitious projects take to conceive and produce? What kind of planning goes into it?

I’m curious where you first started seeing miniature painting and handmade paper and how you became interested in it. You have referred to the origins in mughal-era painting. Do you draw inspiration from this far back in Persian history while dealing with more current issues?

What keeps you drawn to recreating these “ordinary” objects in such painstaking detail in your work?

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