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Sayera Anwar
Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be an artist?
A: I have always had a passion for art since childhood. As the youngest of three siblings, I often watched my sisters paint and draw, which developed my interest in making art. Over time, my love for art grew, leading me to pursue it as a career.
Q: What kind of environment did you grow up in, and how did it shape your artistic sensibilities?
A: I grew up in a small town in Kasur, and then I moved to Islamabad at a very young age. The transition from a small town to a city was overwhelming and left me feeling unsettled. I’ve always longed for a place to call home, and this search for home continues making it a central theme in my work, reflecting my ongoing sensitivity for the topic.
Q: What’s art for you, how do you define it?
A: I am still determining my role, what it means to be an artist and my art. I do believe it is a form of my personal expression, as I do enjoy creating art out of things I borrow from my surroundings: The visuals, the sound, the narrative, and the ideas. For me, art does not exist for me as an object or something tangible. It is evidence of something I have experienced with my body, mind, and soul since, as most of my work is experience based , which blurs the line between art and life.
Q: What role does emotion play in your creative process and finished pieces?
A: I feel emotions are quite apparent in my work, especially in my two projects: filming my grandmother for Bachpan Ka Mela(Childhood Street Festival), where she recounts a Pre-Partition festival, and the recent short film series that I worked in Chicago, where I connected with strangers and asked about their life experiences and their relation with the Chicago and the US. I feel when I am collaborating with other people, that’s when the work is emotionally charged.
Q: Can you walk us through your creative process?
A: My creative process is central to exploring conceptual themes emerging from observation and personal experience, leading to my growth as a person and an artist. After completing my undergraduate degree, from The Beaconhouse National University, in Lahore, Pakistan, I was nominated by my professor for an exhibition, Dūje Pāse toñ (From the Other Side), focusing on the theme of Partition India and Pakistan in 1947. For the exhibition, I collaborated with my grandmother, who was forced to migrate from Jalandhar, India, to Pakistan. While working on the film Bachpan Ka Mela (Childhood Street Festival), I understood the importance of conversations in understanding the complexity of our world. That helped me further do my work when, in 2022, when I moved to Chicago, I was lost in a new landscape, so I explored the city by walking and public transportation to make sense of the new world I had entered. In my wandering, I encountered people who were also outsiders to Chicago. I made a series of experimental short films. I conversed with an Afghan refugee seeking asylum, an Indian woman working in a retail shop, a woman from Tennessee, and a Syrian barber. These encounters gave me insight into their lives and diasporic Chicago experiences. They all belonged to different backgrounds, from one another and me. Yet I felt an affinity and realized that the human condition and emotion blur most boundaries.
Q: What mediums do you use in your practice and why?
A: My practice is interdisciplinary; I use mediums that go best with the idea I want to convey, and usually, the process guides me. I have worked with film, photography, painting, and organic materials like seeds and soil. For instance, I use materials like seeds and soil to merge two places and express nature’s indifference to man-made borders.
Q: What inspires you most in life outside of art?
A: Since I moved to Chicago, I developed a strong interest in cooking, it has become a way for me to feel connected to home. Whenever I want to prepare something, I usually reach out to my mother, sisters, or friends for recipes. I believe this has been a wonderful way to stay connected with the people I care about.
Q: If you could have dinner with any artist, living or dead, who would it be and why?
A: I would love to have dinner with the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who passed away in 2016. I admire his films, as they taught me to appreciate the beauty of life’s slowness, especially in his film Where Is the Friend’s House?
Q: What message do you hope your art conveys about you and your journey?
A: I would want them to know and understand my confusion and how I am constantly trying to understand my surroundings, as my practice is not restricted to place or time. Whenever I showed my work to anyone, they would always come and express their experience of the event. For example, when I was working on the Partition of 1947 in Pakistan, many people came to share their ancestral stories. Now, In Chicago, when I made work about my diaspora experience, I had people come to me to speak about their experience of feeling like an outsider or their migration experience. From my work, I want to evoke a deep sense of connection and empathy, recognizing that despite cultural, geographical, or personal differences, shared human experiences and emotions unite us all, introspecting on the complexities of migration, identity, and belonging to reflect on their relationships to place, memory, and the people around them.
Q: If you had to describe your relationship with your art in one sentence, what would it be?
A: Art is life, and life is about becoming.
Q: If your art had a soundtrack, what kind of music would it include?
A: I feel a deep connection to the sound bath music. It resonates with my work process because its vibrations penetrate both the body and the mind in such a profound way. I also feel it when doing my work, where the process becomes a meditative experience, where the boundaries between mind, body, and work begin to blur, much like the fluid.
Q: How does the art market influence your practice?
A: I don’t think about the market when creating my work, and I also feel my work is not commercial. However, at the sametime, I also feel there is an audience for what I make. The themes I explore are not unique to me; I’m sure there are other artists who also address similar ideas and subjects. So, while the market isn’t my focus, my work likely resonates with a broader community.
Q: How has the internet and virtual presence impacted your practice?
A: In my practice, I use the internet by posting photographs on my Instagram, which I take nearly every day with my phone to capture my surroundings. For me, the internet serves as a public visual diary. Also, I have connected with other photographers and artists on Instagram, which helps me stay updated on their practice and vice versa of course!