Brossard, QC, CANADA - This submission from Artist, Shazia Ahmad, pushes me to look at my own isolation through an outward lens. Though we sit in our disconnection, this diorama’s vibrancy reminds me that we are not our perception, our distilled interpretations are a piece of a much larger and more colourful picture.

Description from the Artist: My practice has always reflected my lived experiences in terms of interactions, history, journeys, and relationships and my handmade dioramas are no exception. Previous dioramas have interpreted what kind of relationships and community can be formed over a short period of time. To explain the concept further, I have been populating my dioramas with paper characters, usually from my immediate surroundings and with their permission, and then digitally photographing these interactions. These characters are usually engaged in humourous interactions with one another, though this has changed with the pandemic as I now focus primarily on solitary characters. The interactions are then photographed. 

“Transition (Soliloquy)” is unique in that I made five iterations of the same character passing time in the same space, waiting out the pandemic all alone. The diorama is constructed with plywood, foam core, acrylic, embroidery on fabric, book board and fabric. The paper figurine at the center of it, based on myself, is constructed from a digital print on paper, painted in gouache. Two of the photographs from this series were part of Visionary Art Collective’s Her Weight in Gold online exhibition from January 8 – February 24, 2021. One of the photographs was also part of the annual symposium of Concordia University’s Art History Graduate Students’ Association visual vitrine titled Empathy/Empathie from January 18 – February 28, 2021.

Find more from Shazia on her website and Instagram!

Bio from the Artist: Born in Karachi, Pakistan to a Pakistani father and a Chilean mother, my practice and interests are centred on the notions of home and belonging, tied to the broader theme of otherness due to my interfaith and mixed-race background. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts from Concordia University in 2019 and was a finalist for the Prix Albert-Dumouchel in 2018. I was also awarded the Guido Molinari Prize in Studio Arts upon graduation and  received the Earl Pinchuk and Gary Blair Undergraduate Award in the course of my studies. I am the recipient of a 2019 Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create grant and have exhibited my work in Canada, the United States, and Spain. I have a previous double major undergraduate degree in Art History and History, and I completed my BTEC Foundation Diploma from Central Saint Martins in 1999.

“Transition (Soliloquy)” is a diorama I completed during the first COVID lockdown and the work is very much about confinement, an addiction to social media, and a sense of never-ending dread, given the nature of the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Yet, these experiences are universal as the entire world went into its first lockdown after the World Health Organisation declared the pandemic on March 11, 2020. Home and domesticity are central to all of my work, and this diorama was no exception. Subsequent artworks have also dealt with living and trying to find comfort as the pandemic continues without end one year later. 

Due to COVID and the uncertainty of the future, I postponed postgraduate studies for a year and focused on my practice instead. Montreal has been in a near constant state of lockdowns and restrictions since March 2020 and as I have been limiting my social contacts since that time, I created a home studio and have been growing my practice ever since. Initially, I focused on painting as it was something I had not done seriously for two years, and then I moved on to watercolour monotypes. Additionally, I undertook woven projects and dioramas, both of which I was working on prior to the pandemic. As a result, I also continued to exhibit my work both in person and online. If there is one small positive I can take from COVID, it is that it has been a time of intense artistic exploration for me and has solidified some of the themes of my work.