2022 MFA Thesis Exhibition

There are different languages to my work. But always the same space. The same cluster of reference images always cause the work to come into existence. I use ballpoint pen, as this is a medium that is accessible at first glance to anyone who sees it. Everyone has at some moment used a ballpoint pen to sign a check or write a name or take notes. 

My series Painters, people, and philosophers depicts the Shia community, a minority in Lahore, Pakistan. They congregate each year to celebrate the month of Muharram by mourning the unjust murder the Imam Hussain, the grandson of the prophet. The congregation is dense and heavily packed. Each individual is lost, hence in my drawings, I take great care to draw their faces. But each person is also “one” with the environment they’re in. Ego and individuality succumbs to a mass of a greater purpose.

Ghazi Sikander Mirza (b. 1991, Lahore, Pakistan) is a visual artist currently based in New York. Mirza graduated from The National College of Arts in 2016. Trained in the medium of oil painting, he received distinction for his final thesis show. Mirza has been exhibited in Canvas Gallery, Karachi; Taseer art gallery, Lahore; and Alhambra art gallery,Lahore. He is an MFA candidate in Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design/The New School.. In 2021 he was awarded the Sadeqiun Pride of Performance Award by the government of Pakistan for his work as a painter. He seeks to build a narrative as a visual artist between the relationship an individual has to their urban environment and how the individual creates meaning for themself by becoming a part of a crowd. In-between spaces of the street and moving vehicles are also a recurring theme for his work.