Faculty of Art

Sculpture/Installation

Zenab Kazmi

میرا پیچیدہ جسم My Own Complicated Body

Hand-sculpted clay figurines

“Growing up as an only child, a daughter, and queer in Pakistan, my body carried a weight of shame. I internalized endless contradictions: too thin or too fat, too dark or not dark enough, always something, but never enough. My body felt like a burden shaped by family and social expectations rooted in inherited colonial ideals of beauty, gender, and worth.After leaving an abusive hetero-marriage in 2021, I began the long process of remembering and reclaiming myself. On January 1st, 2022, I stood before a mirror with clay in hand and sculpted my body. It was the first time I truly looked at myself. I cried with grief, love, gratitude, and apology.Since then, each year I sculpt a small figurine of my body and transform it into an incense holder. These figures carry Pakistani incense, often burned at shrines, turning my body into a sacred site of memory, survival, and renewal.Mera Pechida Jism is an ongoing ritual of witnessing myself differently each year. What was once a site of shame becomes, slowly and intentionally, a place of reverence.”