Haya Zaidi: Up Against : Kavi Gupta | Washington Blvd. Fl. 2

The body of work presented in Up Against draws inspiration from classical South Asian and Sufi narratives - poems like Gulshan-i 'Ishq, Madhumalati, Hamzanama, and other mythic romances - in which a recurring motif unfolds: a man undertakes perilous journeys through dark forests, confronts fearsome beasts, and ultimately rescues a princess, a figure often depicted as helpless, without agency. Zaidi revisits these stories and their characters, rewriting their narratives to reflect a contemporary perspective on women's lives, power, and autonomy. She reimagines the monstrous and ferocious imagery of these manuscripts, transforming demons into whimsical, cartoon-like figures that coexist with women rather than threaten them. Through this intentional shift, Zaidi proposes that once fears or harmful myths are confronted, they lose their power - and can even appear absurd or playful. By situating women as active, self-determined participants rather than passive figures to be saved, her paintings interrogate and subvert the traditional fairy tales and Sufi myth, recontextualizing them for a contemporary lens. In her paintings, Zaidi's protagonists share space with these mythical creatures, befriending them, confronting them head-on, or remaining entirely un-reactive to their presence. Their calm, surrendered stature embodies a quiet power. Within this space, Zaidi establishes the foundation for a new kind of storytelling: one that centers the lives of the women in and around her own.

Axis Mundi, 2026; reimagines the sacred site as a contested yet generative space, centering feminine presence within architectures from which it has historically been excluded. Drawing on the concept of the “axis mundi” as a point of spiritual convergence, the composition relocates this vertical, metaphysical axis into the body of a female figure, positioning her as both conduit and anchor. A network of female forms unfolds across the surface in varying states of intimacy, support, and exchange. These figures resist passive roles, instead inhabiting the space with ease and familiarity—gestures of touch, offering, and proximity suggest forms of relational agency that operate outside prescribed structures of devotion. The central figure, holding a fruit, becomes a stabilizing presence around which these interactions circulate, evoking cycles of negotiation between access and belonging. The architectural backdrop—articulated through domes and intricate surface patterning—invokes the visual language of Islamic sacred space, while simultaneously opening it to reinterpretation. Within and above this structure, mythic creatures appear as residual figures of warning and control, echoing inherited narratives that have historically conditioned women through fear and moral surveillance. Here, however, these entities are rendered disarmed, even companionable; their softened presence signals a quiet undoing of their former authority. Toward the right, is an inscription in Urdu: خوش آمدید a translated as ‘welcome’, subtly reframing the space as one of openness and access rather than restriction. Materially, the work incorporates textiles sourced from garments worn by women within the artist’s personal community. These fabrics function as both surface and archive, embedding the painting with traces of lived experience, memory, and everyday acts of presence within restrictive environments. Their inclusion extends the work beyond representation, operating as a quiet form of inscription and collective embodiment. Suspended between defiance and reconfiguration, the painting does not resolve the tensions it evokes. Instead, it proposes a reorientation of the sacred—one in which access is reclaimed, authority is diffused, and the feminine body itself becomes a site through which spiritual and spatial boundaries are renegotiated.