Pem Lham | Mahnoor Salman Khan | Krisha Bhuva | Mays Al Moosawi | Alishba Binte Faysal | Afina Ashraf | Jahnvi Singh Rohet
She - 7 Women | 7 South Asian Artists | 7 Voices
25th May - 5th July 2026
Location
Pristine Contemporary
This exhibition begins with a question: what does it mean to truly see a woman, not as subject, but as force? Across the works of seven artists from the subcontinent, the act of seeing becomes layered, intimate, and charged. A hand is never just a hand. It carries memory, labour, inheritance; the quiet choreography of care. It is in the folding of cloth, the kneading of dough, the holding of a child, the making of an artwork, and also in the quiet, unspoken tremor of allowing oneself to love. The fear of falling, of losing ground, of being seen too fully, and alongside it, the audacity it takes to step forward anyway. The hand becomes both tool and testimony.
Here, in the works of these 7 artists, Afina Ashraf, Alishba Binte Faysal, Jahnvi Singh Rohet, Krisha Bhuva, Mahnoor Salman Khan, Mays Al Moosawi, and Pem Lham, colour is not decorative. It is emotional architecture. Pigment holds the weight of lived experience: desire, fatigue, joy, rupture. It stains, bleeds, resists. Movement, too, is not simply gesture; it is the rhythm of a life lived in fragments, interrupted, resumed, negotiated. The works oscillate between stillness and urgency, echoing a hyperkinetic world where attention is constantly pulled outward, yet the interior life insists on depth. At the centre of this inquiry is the gaze. Not passive, not ornamental. But precise, knowing, and unflinching. The female gaze here does not ask for permission. It confronts, reframes, and reclaims. In a landscape saturated with noise, it becomes an act of power to hold focus, to look, and to be looked at, on one’s own terms.
These artists inhabit the porous boundaries between art and commerce, creation and obligation, solitude and entanglement. Their practices are not removed from life; they are shaped by it. Motherhood, daughterhood, sisterhood, partnership, labour, these are not themes imposed from outside, but conditions that contour the work itself. The studio is not always separate from the home. The doorbell rings for an OTP. A phone lights up. The world enters, uninvited, insistent. And yet, within this, there is a discipline of return. To switch on and off is perhaps a myth. What emerges instead is a continuous negotiation, a way of moving between roles without fragmentation. A refusal to see distraction as disruption, but as part of the ecology of making. The works carry this tension: between control and surrender, attention and interruption, self and other.
Together, these seven artists offer not a singular narrative, but a constellation of ways of being. Ashraf turns to the domestic to trace unseen labour and emotional inheritances of women, while Faysal returns to memory, personal and archival, in a dreamlike exploration of how histories shape identity. Bhuva moves between body and nature, where softness becomes resistance and the feminine is lived rather than depicted. Khan reworks miniature to hold love in its most fragile and enduring states, longing, absence, return, while Al Moosawi centres the female figure within charged terrains of identity and desire, where vulnerability expands into a collective narrative. Within this constellation, Rohet moves across painting, text, and installation, drawing from Indian philosophy and mythology to explore selfhood and devotion as both intimate and expansive. Lham brings a vivid, fluid sensibility to belonging, where colour and movement articulate identity in flux. Together, these works resist resolution. They remain open, shifting, and alive, where love, labour, memory, and selfhood are not fixed themes, but lived, evolving realities.
She=She(art)=S(<3)
Featured Works
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Soft pastel, gouache, oil pastel, gold leaf on wasli paper | 2026
2 Ft x 3 Ft
(24 inches x 36 inches)
Longing
Soft pastel, gouache, coloured pencil, gold leaf on wasli paper | 2026
3 Ft x 2 Ft
(36 inches x 24 inches)
The Sky Remembers
Watercolours and gold pigment on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches x 14 inches)
Spring mood
Watercolour on raw silk | 2026
2.79 Ft x 1.29 Ft
(33.5 inches X 15.5 inches)
Washmallay
Oil and Charcoal on Canvas | 2026
3.5 Ft x 4.5 Ft
(42 inches x 54 inches)
A Living Performance
Acrylic, Pastel, Marker, Gold leaf on Canvas | 2023
5 Ft x 7.42 Ft
(60 Inches x 89 Inches)
Sangat
Oil, Charcoal and Wood Stain on Canvas | 2026
2.66 Ft x 3.33 Ft
(32 inches x 40 inches)
The Sublime Quite of Becoming
Watercolours and gold pigment on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches x 14 inches)
You Let Me Be, That is Love
Watercolours on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches X 14 inches)
Material Girls
Soft pastel, gouache, gold leaf on wasli paper | 2026
3 Ft x 2 Ft
(36 inches x 24 inches)
A World Within II
Watercolours and gold pigment on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches X 14 inches)
Every Leaf Speaks Your Name
Watercolors on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches x 14 inches)
Westridge ’14
Oil and Charcoal on Canvas | 2026
3.5 Ft x 4.66 Ft
(42 inches x 56 inches)
After the Chaos, She Comes Back to Herself
Pencil, Technical pen, Marker, Gold leaf on cotton paper | 2024
1 Ft x 0.66 Ft
(12 inches x 8 inches)
One and A Half Knots
Oil, Charcoal and Coloured Pencil on Canvas | 2026
1.16 Ft x 1.66 Ft
(14 inches x 20 inches)
My Comfort Remains
Soft pastel, gouache, gold leaf on wasli paper | 2026
3 Ft x 2 Ft
(36 inches x 24 inches)
She gives love to everyone, but forgets herself
Acrylic, Pastel, Marker, Gold leaf on Canvas | 2026
3 Ft x 3.66 Ft
(36 Inches x 44 Inches)
Girls Hunting
Soft pastel, gouache, gold leaf on wasli paper | 2026
3 Ft x 2 Ft
(36 inches x 24 inches)
Silent presence lll
watercolour on raw silk | 2026
1.29 Ft x 1.5 Ft
(15.5 inches X 18 inches)
The last hour of the night is hers alone
Acrylic, Pastel, Thread on canvas | 2026
2.08 Ft x 2.16 Ft
(25 Inches x 26 Inches)
A World Within I
Watercolours and gold pigment on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches x 14 inches)
As she grows older she learns that the world does not revolve around her, but she revolves around herself
Pencil, Technical pen, Marker on cotton paper | 2024
1 Ft x 0.66 Ft
(12 inches x 8 inches)
Under the Quiet Moon
Watercolors on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches x 14 inches)
Night Song
Soft pastel, gouache, gold leaf on wasli paper | 2026
3 Ft x 2 Ft
(36 inches x 24 inches)
The Stillnesss of Becoming
Watercolours and gold pigment on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches x 14 inches)
The Quite Desire to Return Home
Pencil, Technical pen on cotton paper | 2024
1 Ft x 0.66 Ft
(12 inches x 8 inches)
Unconditionally Pink
Oil and Charcoal on Canvas | 2026
2.66 Ft x 3.33 Ft
(32 inches x 40 inches)
The Last Orange
Oil, Charcoal and Coloured Pencil on Canvas | 2026
1.16 Ft x 1.66 Ft
(14 inches x 20 inches)
Playdate Leftovers
Oil, Charcoal and Coloured Pencil on Canvas | 2026
1.16 Ft x 1.66 Ft
(14 inches x 20 inches)
Ephemeral Tranquillity
Watercolours and gold pigment on arches paper | 2026
1.33 Ft x 1.16 ft
(16 inches x 14 inches)
Press |
Noor Anand Chawla
The art round-up: Summer’s must-see art exhibitions
14th June 2026
Shreya Shah
In the world of ‘She’: An exhibition that explores the feminine gaze and the idea of becoming
22nd May 2026
Artists |
Shop |
Jahnvi Singh Rohet
Soft pastel, gouache, oil pastel, gold leaf on wasli paper | 2026