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Installation View: Haya Zaidi Up Against; Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by Garrett Walinske.
Installation View: Haya Zaidi Up Against; Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by Garrett Walinske.
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Installation View: Haya Zaidi Up Against; Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by Garrett Walinske.
Installation View: Haya Zaidi Up Against; Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by Garrett Walinske.
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Installation View: Haya Zaidi Up Against; Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by Garrett Walinske.
Installation View: Haya Zaidi Up Against; Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by Garrett Walinske.
Haya Zaidi Pakistan, b. 1993
Out to Get Me, 2026
Acrylics, textiles and teawash on canvas
36 x 24 in.
(91.44 x 60.96 cm)
Frame: 38 7/8 x 26 3/4 x 2 in.
(98.74 x 67.95 x 5.08 cm)
(91.44 x 60.96 cm)
Frame: 38 7/8 x 26 3/4 x 2 in.
(98.74 x 67.95 x 5.08 cm)
9433
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Out to Get Me, 2026; explores the complex dynamics of visibility, surveillance, and negotiated presence within public spaces. A female figure stands toward the right of the composition, clutching the...
Out to Get Me, 2026; explores the complex dynamics of visibility, surveillance, and negotiated presence within public spaces. A female figure stands toward the right of the composition, clutching the scarf that covers her body, her gesture signaling acute awareness of exposure and self-protection. Her eyes are closed, and her posture conveys a practiced calm—a quiet, deliberate acceptance of a landscape that has long conditioned fear and vigilance. Across the center, a disoriented, serpentine form weaves through the composition. While its shape evokes menace, it is rendered with decorative intricacy, blending into the surrounding visual field. The figure functions less as a source of terror than as a familiar, omnipresent element of the environment, signaling the ways fear has been internalized and aestheticized within South Asian visual culture.
From the corners of the painting, clawed hands emerge, poised in gesture and motion, evoking the persistent threat of harassment and unwanted attention in public spaces. Their decorative articulation emphasizes how such anxieties have become woven into the everyday visual and social landscape. Yet, rather than provoking panic, these presences are held in quiet acknowledgment. The central figure remains composed, engaging with her environment not through avoidance but through deliberate presence and awareness. Materially, as in the artist’s broader practice, the inclusion of textiles sourced from garments worn by women within her personal community extends the work into the realm of lived experience. The fabrics serve as traces of daily negotiation, vigilance, and resilience, embedding a collective memory of movement through spaces that are both familiar and fraught. The painting portrays vulnerability and fear not as paralyzing forces but as conditions to be navigated. In this reimagined landscape, calm, attentiveness, and acceptance coexist with threat, suggesting a form of agency that is quiet, internalized, and deeply attuned to context.
From the corners of the painting, clawed hands emerge, poised in gesture and motion, evoking the persistent threat of harassment and unwanted attention in public spaces. Their decorative articulation emphasizes how such anxieties have become woven into the everyday visual and social landscape. Yet, rather than provoking panic, these presences are held in quiet acknowledgment. The central figure remains composed, engaging with her environment not through avoidance but through deliberate presence and awareness. Materially, as in the artist’s broader practice, the inclusion of textiles sourced from garments worn by women within her personal community extends the work into the realm of lived experience. The fabrics serve as traces of daily negotiation, vigilance, and resilience, embedding a collective memory of movement through spaces that are both familiar and fraught. The painting portrays vulnerability and fear not as paralyzing forces but as conditions to be navigated. In this reimagined landscape, calm, attentiveness, and acceptance coexist with threat, suggesting a form of agency that is quiet, internalized, and deeply attuned to context.
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