Qinza Najm’s practice is an enigmatic mix of everyday things, mostly old. She uses materials like silk and metal, but also brings discarded carpets home to work with. Her art moves between painting, installation, sculpture and immersive performance. Her life has been no less interesting. Born and raised in Lahore, Najm trained in psychology before turning to art more than a decade ago. She now divides her time between New York and Lahore and has exhibited internationally, including at the Queens Museum, the Bronx Museum, Christie’s, Art Basel and the Lahore Biennale.

Her recent work, The Garden We Carry, is an immersive installation situated between Times Square and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, one of New York City’s busiest junctions, frequented by millions. The installation transforms everyday objects, such as suitcases and shoes, into landscapes of transition, where things exist between what they once were and what they are becoming. Her other notable works include Veil of Bullets, a piece on violence against women, and Zakhm-Marham: A Reclamation, among others.

Najm was recently in Lahore and spoke to The News on Sunday about the intriguing grids and layering in her work, the politics of the body and why she sees growth and transformation as conscious choices. Excerpts.

The News on Sunday: You keep returning to chess-like grids in your work where the surface shifts and never quite settles. What led you to that form?

Qinza Najm: I think it started when I was very young. I used to play chess with my father. For me, chess is not just a game; it’s a structure. If you look at the structure of a house, your personality, a country, geopolitics, there is always strategy and power behind it. A lot of it is invisible. My father used to tell me, “You can’t be impulsive in chess. You have to be patient and think ahead.” I think those became life lessons for me. When I look at the society, I see these structures and rules. But there are a lot of problems within the structures too. Women, especially, are constantly negotiating these structures. And then there is this idea of shifting. Nothing is stable. A narrative can completely change in a moment.

I was also thinking about Ray Dalio’s The Changing World Order, which talks about these patterns: how empires rise and fall and how power shifts… the Ottoman Empire, the Roman Empire, America. Nothing is permanent. Everything is changing.

TNS: Much of your art is built through layering and re-working; one can almost see that on the surface. Is that planned, or do you just go with it?

QN: I do both. I think a lot about home and belonging. I have realised that home doesn’t have to be just a physical space; although having a physical space is very important, especially for women. This is especially true for someone like me, who lives between different worlds. I’m from Pakistan, but I’ve lived in America for longer and been more integrated there. So when people ask, “Where are you from?” you start thinking about these things.

I think the idea of layering comes from human identity. We all have various aspects to our personalities. We all carry histories and difficult experiences. Earlier, I used to hide these things, but now I’m like: that’s all part of it. Let’s show the process… how this was built. Let’s not erase it. Let’s keep it.

Because we’re all created in layers, my work has a lot of layers. I like the layering, and I like that it has a history. What do you add? What do you remove? It’s a constant negotiation. You make a decision; you remove something, you add another. In the process, you get to know yourself better. The layers create a story for me. I’m trying to show that we all have so many problems and traumas, and are beautiful despite that and because of that.

TNS: In some of your works, one can notice grass growing through unstable concrete structures. What does that mean to you?

QN: The notion of growth is connected with transformation; whether it’s the transformation of a material or of a person. The material I use is often reclaimed. I don’t buy new things. I try to sustain things that have been discarded. I take something from the raddi (discarded scrap or recyclable material) and transform it into a painting. People are then forced to look at something that was discarded and assign it a different kind of rutba (status). Something worth ten rupees becomes something people have to pay hundreds of thousands for. I’m interested in the idea of taking something banal and making it precious.

Notice how when a seed grows, it first breaks in the dark. You don’t see what is happening underneath the soil. Sometimes growth happens very quietly. I’ve always been fascinated by how people grow, how shifting horizons create new opportunities and how new things emerge, even when things aren’t stable. There is always growth within. Even if the whole world were to become dark or end, nature would take over.

TNS: In works like #NoHonorInKilling and Veil of Bullets, you deal with violence against women. How do you approach that without reducing the complexity of the subject?

QN: The idea first came to me during a visit to Pakistan. The Qandeel Baloch case had just happened and it really disturbed me. Then I went back to America, and a few weeks later there were massive school shootings. As I was working on this project in 2016, I found that nearly 1,100 women had reportedly been killed in so-called honour killings in Pakistan the previous year. And those were only the documented cases. Then I came across research citing a similar cumulative number of children and adults killed in school shootings in America. That parallel really struck me.

So I started collecting 9mm bullet casings connected to these histories, alongside casings from shooting ranges around New York. I collected 1,100 of them. I straightened the bullets and stitched them by hand, one by one, onto an 11-foot piece of wire mesh. It was like a huge net or dupatta. When I wore it, it weighed 50 or 60 kilos.

The mesh also had small, empty 9mm casings attached. Inside those, I placed small black-and-white photographs of children and teachers killed in school shootings and women killed in honour killings. The audience had to unroll the piece and pull out the photographs to see the people behind the statistics. I performed the work in museums, sitting inside it while people unrolled the photos. Then I would stand and spread my arms, and the audience would lift the entire 11-foot piece together. The more people lifted it, the less weight I carried.

TNS: The body keeps returning in your work. What does the body allow you to explore?

QN: I think the body is very political. So much of what we fight over, gender, race, women’s rights, comes back to the body. In Pakistan, especially, everything is about the woman’s body: what she can show, where she can go and what she can do. And then you come back to power. It is also a way to think about power: who has it, who controls the board and what happens when that balance shifts. When women gain power, it creates a shift that men may not be able to handle.

For me, that also connects to resilience. My father gave me so much confidence and that stayed with me through the difficult journey of moving from academia into being an artist. Women are resilient. Maybe these things look complicated, but they can be simplified. That’s what attracted me to art. When I was doing my PhD, I could write an academic paper and maybe 0.001 percent of people would read it. As an artist, you can create a much bigger dialogue. You can take complicated questions about power, gender, geopolitics or climate change and bring them into a space where people can actually discuss them. That’s what I think art is for: dialogue.

TNS: Do you think artists have a responsibility to engage with social justice? Is art political?

QN: I don’t think you have to label art as political, but I think art is political by default. Even the act of making something, especially when you leave a safe, stable path to do it, can be political. You’re choosing to do something because you believe in it. That itself is a kind of rebellion. I think of Picasso’s Guernica. It was made in response to the war, but good art doesn’t have to be overtly political or tell you what to think. It can have layers. If it opens up conversations, makes people think about an issue or creates some kind of emotional response, then I think that is good art.

For me, that connects to my own life. I left the safety of my psychology practice and chose art. Like a mad person, I gave up a stable income because I was interested in this. But that is my life and, I think, the crux of my work: finding comfort within discomfort, constantly moving and looking for yourself. A lot of my work comes from movement, migration and displacement, and finding transformation within that. I don’t want victimisation. Leaving my comfort zone was a choice. Choosing transformation and choosing to look at the light was a choice.

I think much growth comes out of messed-up situations. You don’t always grow when you are safe. When there is pain and difficulty, you have to find a way to grow through it. That’s where I think growth becomes a choice. You have to make yourself uncomfortable.

TNS: You’re working in New York at a time of immense instability around the world. How do you see your work in relation to what’s happening globally?

QN: It’s all connected. I feel like, as an artist, especially when you live away from your country, whether you like it or not, you become a kind of cultural ambassador. No matter what I do, I always say, “I’m Pakistani.” So when Pakistan comes up, when all these geopolitical questions come up, I feel connected to them.

I feel like art flourishes in these messy times. When things are happening, artists are often the first people to hold up a mirror to society and say, this is what is happening to the world. This is because they sit slightly outside society, observing it. They are, I think, the beating heart of a culture. If you look at any country or civilisation- the Roman Empire, the Ottomans, Iran- their art and culture tell you something about the health of that society. Look at Iranian culture: their miniatures, Persian carpets. It’s brilliant. It tells you how old and evolved that civilisation is. Art is a softer way to create dialogue. But that softness has power. Through empathy, you can say things that you cannot say through harshness. Especially in societies like ours, which are already so surveilled, you can hold up a mirror through art.

Ultimately, all art is political.

The interviewer is a staff member.