Sobia Ahmad

Biography

Sobia Ahmad was born and raised in Pakistan and moved to the United States at the age of fourteen.  Her interdisciplinary art practice investigates the transcendental power of everyday experiences, objects, and rituals through photography, time-based media, and social practice. She is influenced by traditions of devotional poetry and oral storytelling associated with Sufi mysticism. The Wise-Fool archetype from Sufism, which values simplicity and improvisation over intellectual certainty, guides her practice. Her process-based work, often created in domestic and social settings, engages with themes of relationality, reciprocity, embodied knowledge, material experimentation, and DIY ethos. She employs many analog methods—including weaving, participatory workshops, and eco-friendly photochemical techniques—to explore how slowness and tactility can activate our inner lives and enhance our engagement with socio-political and ecological issues.

Ahmad earned her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (2024), and a BA in Studio Art and BS in Community Health from the University of Maryland, College Park (2016, 2015). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY; Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA; Queen Mary University, London, England; Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA; and the Women Filmmakers Festival at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. She has attended the SOMA Summer residency, Mexico City, Mexico (2024), and Halcyon Arts Lab’s socially engaged art fellowship, Washington, DC (2019–2020).