Hello World!

I’m Zainub Mawaz(pronounced zey-nub muh-waaz) an artist, academic and curator since the last two decades.

I was a wild spirited, a bare back horse-rider inner child stuck at the age of five, she is curious and mischievous but empathetic. Being a retired polo player, and a darn good horse rider, I have seen what it is like to rise and fall in the field and in life. Art is what has kept me grounded, it is my essence, but so is that inner child like curiosity. Between these dimensions of observation, sensing, perception, time and space, my art exists. May you enjoy your time creating meaning, may it touch your soul for I have poured mine into them.

By my tweens I was the voice of the whole class when filing complaints, I stood up for the ones who couldn’t speak for themselves.

This rebel had awakened. I find her in my moments of pain, suffering, nostalgic messiness and strife. She lights me up while she tears me down. And it is she who fuels my passion for art. I have an endearing discourse with the visuals that surround me in any given time, form or space since I work in mixed media and prefer to spread my blank surfaces around me. Working on themes from literature, drawing inspiration from everything I perceive as my reality.

I believe “Art does imitate life” and it has always been the ontological questions that bothered me, especially pertaining to the driving quest for understanding what is the power of art?

We, as artists. are visual storytellers who draw inspiration from human storybooks. In this same vein, self-awareness cannot possibly be learnt from a textbook, it requires a timeless myth, parable, legend, folklore to erect its foundations. It has to recognize the truth within before it can judge the world outside. That is an example of how powerful our tools are, as well as offer insight into who I am as an educator. If I am not painting or creating, I am engaged with training others in this pathway of self discovery through enhancement of skill.

I have not shown my work to the general public because I always felt I was giving too much of myself away, I wished to busy myself truly by just making art for my own self- awareness. It took a lot of generational trauma and joint family system problems to promote these feelings of crippling self doubt. So I have been chiselling away at the hard outer shell, to be the best version of myself, believing in my visual power of communication, preferring to give voice to the myriads of constellations of stories I hold. It is now time to rock the cradle.

So now, after rebuilding myself from zero after Covid did what Covid does, I have relieved myself of the burden and wish to show the pieces of myself that are in this digital window to my soul-in its most rawest, most pure and detached form.

I am still reserving most information allowing you, as the viewer to form your own meanings and analogies and then. I have a few years yet to tell the entire story. You shall find excerpts from my book and other writings alongside the drawings. These are the original thoughts that went behind the artwork.

Stick with me, and you too can embark on this never ending journey with me. Perhaps even own a part of my soul.