2021 MFA Thesis Exhibition
No Vacancy

Hoor Imad Sherpao is a New York City based Pakistani painter, ceramist, video artist and animator. Born in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan in 1991, Sherpao spent her childhood and teenage years in both Peshawar and her ancestral home in Charsadda. She is one of the few female visual artists from Charsadda. In 2016, Sherpao received her BFA from the National College of Arts (NCA) Lahore where she trained as an Indo-Persian miniature painter. Sherpao has actively been taking part in national and international shows since her BFA and has had her work printed in various publications in Pakistan. Her work has been exhibited in group shows, such as “Tarhun: The Beautiful-The Bizarre” at O Art Space in Lahore, “Empirical Empire” at Gallery FullCircle in Karachi, a traveling show titled “Ustaad Shagird” at PNCA Islamabad and Xiang Polytechnic University, China. Solo shows include: “Face To Face” at Gallery Full Circle, Karachi and “For Your Eyes Only” at O Art Space, Lahore. Sherpao moved to New York City in the fall of 2019 after receiving a Merit scholarship for the MFA program at Parsons School of Design and is currently living in New York City.

Email: h.imadnca@hotmail.com              Instagram: @yesitsmehoortheartist

I work in illustration, video and animation. All the mediums that I work in act as segments that come together as installation. In my animations I create narratives that are sourced from my training and practice with Indo-Persian miniature painting. I create human characters, illustrate plants and imaginary forms placed within the interior and exterior environments that I envision for them. These environments rely on memory of locations such as my childhood ancestral home in North Pakistan or interior elements, for example generic theatrical looking curtains that I have witnessed several times in my life. For this installation, the characters also tell a version of their narrative in an accompanying contemporary illuminated book. The characters have travelled and evolved from my paintings to videos to animations; they have the capacity to travel to more than one place at a time. There is a never-ending quality that I like for these characters to possess. Eventually, via the act of repetition, I want these characters and elements to become symbols that are able to represent an idea or provoke a feeling instantly. That feeling or idea is established itself, is based on the natural course of where the narrative travels over time and this evolution is also dependent on the dynamic amongst the characters.