A Contemporary Dialogue With a Decorative Past

This body of work explores the intersection of memory, ornament, and cultural heritage through a series of experimental paintings rooted in historical craft traditions. Drawing from centuries-old artifacts—ranging from Iznik ceramics and Persian fritware to Afghan furniture and Indian textiles—each piece serves as a visual meditation on the decorative languages of the Islamic world and beyond.

Rather than reproducing these artifacts, the paintings reinterpret their forms, motifs, and symbolic narratives. Ships glide across stylized ceramic waves, botanical tilework blooms against imagined landscapes, and figural illustrations resurface through layered backdrops of velvet and glaze. Fragmented references from Ottoman, Persian, Syrian, Indian, and Afghan sources are reassembled into contemporary compositions—bridging epochs through color, form, and intuition.

This collection is not about preservation, but transformation. It seeks to honor the spirit of craftsmanship while asking: how can the aesthetics of the past be reimagined for the present? What stories lie dormant in pattern, texture, and ornament—and what happens when we let them speak again, through a new visual language?