Shanzay Subzwari’s work is influenced by her training in Mughal Miniature painting, whose attention to detail and layering now emerges in her film and video works. Through analogue and digital collage Subzwari presents a desire to examine the Surrealism of the contemporary globalised condition. This Surrealism might exist in events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, political rhetorics or environmental emergencies, or in the differing attitudes to circumstances, which she noticed from living in the major cosmopolitan cities Karachi and London.
Subzwari graduated with a Masters of Fine Art with Distinction from the School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University on the prestigious British Chevening Scholarship (2019/2020), and a Bachelors of Fine Art from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi (2014) with a Distinction in her dissertation and the Award for Academic Excellence in Fine Art. Subzwari is frequently invited to participate in exhibitions both in Pakistan and internationally, including in London (2020, 2019, 2016), Venice, Italy (2019, as part of Imago Mundi at The Venice Biennale), Fribourg, Switzerland (2016), and Istanbul, Turkey (2011), and her work has been represented by GraFFik Gallery, London. She was invited as a fully-funded ‘Watch and Talk’ participant at the Festival Belluard Bollwerk International, Fribourg, Switzerland in 2016, the SAARI artist residency in Mynamaki, Finland in 2018, and was part of the Dean’s Seminar on Art and Value in Madrid, Spain (2020). Subzwari’s work has been acquired for the Hundal Collection at the South Asian Institute, Chicago, USA, and most recently by The Furqaan Ahmed Collection, Pakistan. Along with her full time artist practice, Subzwari writes art reviews, articles and catalogue essays for numerous publications, and has a private teaching venture in The Art Lounge.
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